In Reply to: Men??? posted by Woodie on July 31, 2003 at 19:15:09:
Hi Woody, how are you? Pleased to hear from you. I did say somewhere that anthropos is for both male and female. Maybe you have not read that post of mine yet. What I said was that to play it safe as far as keeping as close to the original as posible is to use man instead of mankind. In modern Greek there is a word for mankind and it is very similar to man. Man is anthropos and mankind is anthropotis. I do not know if there is such a distinction in the Koini. If there is, it would be more corect to stay with man. So this is what I would chose to do based on what I know and don't know at this point. If I found out that there is not distict noun for mankind as opposed to man, and these terms can be used interchangably then that would be different. But since I don't know that at this point I would chose what is the safest, which is to translate it as man. Also anthropos or man as a noun is masculin. So is brother or brethren. They are masculin nouns. Sister is a feminine noun. I am not sure but if I didn't misunderstand you you are saying that terms like brother or brethren are genderless. If that is what you are saying, that is not true. All of the above has to do with grammer and syntax, the bones or skeleton if you will. Then there is the historical, social and other kinds of context, the meat on the bones. What may have been said and understood one way back then, may sound like an insult to women now. But I was not getting into that area at all, and you kind of surpised me with your post. I was just trying to get to the meaning of the word and what would be the closest and safest word, my purpose being to give the literal, intended meaning of the writer. Sam Ajemian