Mat 21:7 - a translation note from Norm Mundhenk

Bob,

No doubt you are aware of the exegetical problem in Matthew 21.7, where there is either confusion or disagreement about what the last word (αὐτῶν) refers to. I would suspect that in the flow of Greek it would be surprising if there were two αὐτῶν in a sentence, and the reference changes between them. If that is true, then the second αὐτῶν would have to refer to the donkey and its colt, as the first αὐτῶν does.

There are certainly exegetes who say that Matthew took Zechariah 9.9 too literally and thought that he had to have Jesus sitting on two donkeys as he entered Jerusalem. Whether Matthew would in fact be likely to do such a thing, I do not know. A quick glance at various translations will show that many of them manage to avoid a plural pronoun in the final clause (Jesus "got on" or "sat thereon" or the like). However, there are others who say that the final αὐτῶν obviously refers to the cloaks just mentioned.

Anyway, I was quite surprised one Sunday when a lady was reading that passage from her translation and she read, " ... brought the donkey and the colt, and laid their coats on them, and he sat on the coats." It was only yesterday that I was able to pounce on the lady and find out what version she was using. NASB, of all things. I was quite surprised and wonder how often NASB has taken such "liberties".

Norm.

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Norm,

I think there are at least four possibilities here:

1. αὐτῶν refers to the coats, not the animals. Unusual but probably not impossible grammar (is there such a thing?).
2. αὐτῶν refers to the animal(s) of the parallel structure without concern for the possibility of a resulting (mistaken) image of Jesus astride two animals at once.
3. αὐτῶν may be a kind of special "singular plural" form (due to the animals being two) with singular meaning (due to the impracticality of riding more than one animal). We have collective singulars, so why not singular plurals?
4. αὐτῶν is ambiguous and the grammar is not well thought through by Matthew.

Anyway, the point is that had we access to speakers of Greek of the time we might get all sorts of interesting data to support one of the above options (or others). But failing that, we have some interesting choices to pick from.

Bob.

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Bob,

_Note that your comments deal with the exegesis. What especially struck me is that the one translation (NASB) that has "taken the bull by the horns" and stated clearly what they take the meaning to be is a translation that would ordinarily be far less likely than other translations to change pronouns to nouns. My own suspicion is that they are very well aware of the options, and they know that anti-Christians writers love to make fun of Matthew having Jesus astride two animals. So under the circumstances, they want to rule out such nonsense completely.
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If I am right, this is a very good example of a translation influenced by theological concerns.

Norm.