Byung-Mu Ahn seems to place a great deal of weight on the concept of ὄχλος which is preferred in Mark over (and against?) λαός. Ochlos conveys a sense of a mixed group of outcasts as opposed to laos which connotes a group organized and unified as "God's people." There is no doubt that ochlos can be read in this way. Most dictionaries list this sense (or something like it) as the second or third definition.
So to my question: what would be the best way to translate ochlos into English?
-anthony
Well, the default for ochlos tends to be "crowd," the noun for whatever group of people happen to be gathered in some place at some time. They are the masses, the populace, defined by residence/presence rather than by ideologies of ethnicity. (It's fun to note that LSJ gives a second meaning of "trouble," presumably as a political opinion of meaning #1!)
ReplyDeleteBy contrast: An ethnos is a group of people defined by characteristics. Dēmos is used for a people of a territory, as nationality rather than ethnicity. Laos tends to imply the division of civilians rather than hierarchs, or foot-soldiers as opposed to specialists or officers in the Homeric military context. It also comes to be used of "this people" as opposed to some other, maintaining the group-division sense that the Hebrew term `am (vs goy) also conveys in common use.
Ochlos is going to wind up close to hoi polloi, "the many," as an alternative description for the bulk of the population—which raises the implicit connection to laos, as this is a word used for the multitude by the few. But unlike laos, ochlos cannot be context-shifted into specific identity. The ochlos is never exclusive. If you aren't in it here, you may be there, because it describes a circumstantial mass of people.
Matthew. The contrast between demos and ochlos is common to a few of the dictionaries I consulted. I've been working on the concept of ethnos recently and I think that we've all been missing something on that one.... more later.
Delete-anthony
Anthony, what’s wrong with “crowd”? I don’t see the problem. Ὄχλος is not used in contexts where we might expect “people of God”, and I don’t see any contrast in usage with Matthew and Luke. What is the evidence that Mark preferred ὄχλος over λαός? I can’t find an instance where, for example, Matthew has substituted λαός for Mark’s ὄχλος. The crowds which followed Jesus (the dominant usage) no doubt included outcasts, etc., but that doesn’t make it a systematic connotation of the Greek word. BDAG has the sense “a large number of people of relatively low status”, but that appears mainly to presuppose situations of popular opposition to leaders (eg. Mk. 11:32). Apart from that specific context, the word remains neutral.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that the BDAG's sense is what interests me here. I've always just thought of ochlos as crowd. But would it be better translated as "crowd of commoners"? The Minjung theologians are keenly interested in the notion that Jesus reaches out to the common folk rather than the political leaders or the folks aligned with the political leaders. I'm trying to determine whether too much is built upon too little.
Delete-anthony
"Motley Crüe"
ReplyDeleteYou win, John.
Delete-anthony