The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

The point on which the confusion of imperfect or careless
scholarship so often makes its blunders is brought out clearly by Dr.
Robinson when he says: "The SUBSTANTIVE OF THE PREDICATE
often expresses not what the subject actually is, but what it is like, or is
accounted to be; so that eimi may be rendered to be accounted, etc."
Dr. PHILIP SCHAFF, in his note, in his translation of Lange's
Matthew, says: "The exact nature of the relation" (expressed by the
copula) "depends upon the nature of the subject and the predicate," that is,
does not depend upon any mutations of meaning in the copula, and this, he
says, "is an acknowledged law of thought and language." He adds: "It is,
perhaps, more correct to say that the figure in these cases does not lie, as is
usually assumed, in the auxiliary verb esti, but either in the subject, or
more usually in the predicate." 405 KAHNIS, as we have seen,
acknowledges that his new view can find no support in the copula, and
says, very correctly: “From the copula 'is' the figurative no more than the
literal can be proven, in the proposition. The copula allows of no change of
meaning. Those who say that ‘is' is equivalent to signifies, mean to say
that either the subject or predicate of a proposition is to be taken
figuratively." 406
Luther’s Version.
Because of this very inflexibility of meaning in the copula "is," the
translations which desert the direct arrangement of the subject, copula, and
predicate, drop the "is," and merge the whole thought in one complex. In
this case the pretender to knowledge is apt to be drawn into the fallacy that
the words which have the locality of the "is" translate the "is;" whereas, in
fact, they translate, in whole or part, the subject or predicate. Let us take
Luther's version to illustrate this. Where "is" stands in the original in
various combinations, Luther's version has upwards of one hundred and
sixty renderings, and yet "is" has, through the whole, its one fixed sense:
all the diversities arising from the connection of the "is"--none from the
"is" itself. Thus Gen. xxvii. 12 (Heb.): "I shall be in his eyes as a deceiver;"
Authorized Version: "I shall seem to him as," etc.; Luther: "And
405 Lange's Matthew, 471.
406 Dogmat. I. 617.