Romans 2:16
Footnote:
7 | The authoritative manuscripts have ἐν ᾗ ἡμέρᾳ "in which day" — with ᾗ as a relative pronoun, dative feminine singular agreeing with ἡμέρᾳ "day". later copies removed the relative pronoun and added in ὅτε "when" : ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ὅτε "in the day when" — ὅτε as a temporal conjunction, introducing a finite clause. The relative pronoun refers the reader back to the previous words, e.g. the Heart, she who jointly bears witness... We found no translations following the authoritative texts on this verse. Every translation follows the change — that is, nearly all modern translations render Romans 2:16 using a temporal clause, e.g., “on the day when God judges...,” even though the critical text preserves ἐν ᾗ ἡμέρᾳ, a relative clause. The Scholar might call it "semantic smoothing" or maybe "an avoidance of wooden literalism" or some sort of crafty-speak of which there are endless ways a tongue can sway thoughts. But this isn't a matter of "wooden literalism" versus "dynamic fluency." It's a case of lexical substitution that erases the embedded doctrinal structure the author is trying to convey. The same translation committees that will appeal to "authoritative" sources will, at the same time, lean toward traditional renderings, theological bias, and reader familiarity, over authoritative sources when it is convenient. In this way variant readings become more of a tool to help scholars translate according to how they want things to read. With variant texts, they can pick and choose what they want as they go. This undermines the notion of the critical text being the true "final authority" in practice, and truly shows the "forked-tongue" nature of traditional translation practices. Are the authoritative texts authoritative or not? And if so, why are you choosing to deviate from them? For our part, the RBT adheres to the authoritative texts as consistently as possible. When we see obvious changes, deletions, insertions, etc. that conflict with the authorities, we stick to the authorities, plain and simple.
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