BrianB wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:25 pm
ending his sentence with “seeing the invisible,” an unexplained paradox that will likely have an unsettling effect on the reader.
jeidsath wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:53 pm
@BrianB -- Check the Greek!
To answer your question and to give you a way to get closer to the Greek, you could open this link:
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/hebrews/11-1.htm
You will see this:
The verse that we are discussing is:
You will notice that the English is the same (a form of "see") for both βλεπομένων and ὁρῶν. Reading the English under the Greek, then, doesn't let you know the difference between those two words in Greek. You need to learn the language for that. You are in a conversation with three people here, all of whom know Greek in one way or another. One advantage that we have, and which you will have as grapple with the Greek, is that we know the difference between the Greek words. When the words in an interlinear (common for the New Testament) or a parallel translation (usual for other classical and post-classical texts) are the same, because we have leant the language, we have ways to go beyond the words interlinked or in parallel columns.
Barry is a seasoned reader with about 40 years of reading Greek notched up on the butt of his rifle. As such, he would have seen the words in umpteen different contexts and will have a feel for the collocations that they are natively used in. Joel still has less the a decade in the Language, so he is still exploring. His multi-pass (reading over and over) approach to reading texts appears to give him an affinity for the Greek. Since the beginning of my engagement with Greek, I have been a commited proponent of rote learning of vocabulary lists. Those three approaches to Greek are going to produce slightly different (but not uncomplimentary) understandings of the differences between those words.
Speaking from my own predilection, when I read βλέπω, I think of βλέμμα "a glance" (ie, "the rapid movement, targeting and the return of the physical eyeballs to their original position", implicit in my choice of gloss is the assumption that Lot very quickly got off targeting. The idea of target and fix on something attentively can be implied b other situations) and ανάβλεψις "the recovery of sight (a healing of physical blindness)", or "looking up" (the physical changing of the angle of sight). When I read ὁράω, I think of ὅρασις and ὅραμα "a vision" (a insight in a dream-like state).
Barry's approach, which we can refer to as
extensive reading allows people to see things in multiple contexts. If a person who approached Greek primarily or predominantly in that way wondered about the difference between the words in Greek, they might remember reading μηδὲ τὸν ἥλιον βλέπουσαι "nor to see the sun" in Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae, 16.204 and reading οὔτε ἐνύπνια ὁρᾶν "nor see dreams" in Herodotus 4.184.4. The sun is a physical object in the sky and a dream is supersensible. Based on previous reading experience such as having seen those collocation, upon reading "see" in English a more exact appreciation of the distinction in sense can be realised.
Either and any way, the end result in understanding that comes from reading the actual Greek rather than the translations or interlined English is that both words mean "see" in so far as βλέπω is with the eyes and ὁράω is in the mind (in this case).
If you do look at the Greek of verse 27 there there is an apparent paradox in ὁράω τὰ ἀόρατα "I see unseen things" in the case of Moses, God. There are two ways to read that - with the same meaning and with different meanings. The same meaning would be like saying "uncomplicated the complex", and a different meaning would be like we use in word plays, e.g. "some people were settled, but the rest were restless". There is only one meaning of "complex" there, but two meanings of "rest. If we only read the translation, or we simply transfer or English understanding to the Greek, then to our thinking, the most obvious would be to
wow at a paradoxical "seeing what can not be seen" (assuming both the same meaning for ὁράω). There is however the possibility that the meaning of ὁρα in ὁρῶν "seeing" (Heb.11:27) and ὁρα in ἀόρατον "unseen" (ibid.) are no more similar in Greek than the two occurrences of "rest" in "the rest are resting" are similar to us. If you know Greek (specifically in this case - the semantic domains of ὁρα), you can consider stuff like that.
jeidsath wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:53 pm
@BrianB -- Check the Greek!
+1. Decide what resources, techniques, knowledge and skills you need to be able to meaningfully engage with the Greek to your own satisfaction, and plan how to get them. There are both low-hanging fruit and choice fruits in the higher branches - knowing a little or knowing a lot will be rewarding either way.