... in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, Lord
Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen. Glory
to You, our God, Glory to You.
O Heavenly King,
the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, You are everywhere and fill all things, Treasury
of blessings, and Giver of life: come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every
impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal,
have mercy on us (three times).
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it is now, was in the beginning, and ever
shall be, world without end. Amen.
Translation
Challenges
Every word, except for the word, “the”,
has received some lexical examination and treatment. This is necessarily an incomplete and ongoing
task. At best we hope to make a good
start.
One of the problems with lexicons is
that they reflect the language of the scholar as much as they reflect the idiom
of first century Greek. Translators
regularly over-translate with the compulsion to explain every nuance rather
than letting the words speak for themselves.
To avoid excessive repetition of
common words such as conjunctions and pronouns we have attempted to reduce
comments to a single, better quality, reference, repeating the reference number;
so that more attention and space can be devoted to more complicated and
difficult words.
Meaning
We have attempted, as far as
possible, to uncover the denotative or explicit meaning of words, in order to
let readers discover connotative or implicit meanings for themselves. Unfortunately, we are not always able to
separate such meanings from our own opinions, such is the frailty of
translation in every generation. Even so
readers should find ample material for exploring such nuances themselves.
Sometimes the denotative or explicit
meaning is easily identified. When all
the lexicons offer one and only one word for translation, the same word in
every case; When a check against a concordance reveals that the Greek word is
always translated this one way; Moreover, when the word is still in common use,
there is no evidence that it has changed meaning, or even changed emphasis over
the years: Then we have found the word’s explicit meaning. Would to God that we were always so
fortunate.
Language is a moving target. Today’s meaning for some words or groups of
words will be ever so slightly different tomorrow. Someone will change to an inflection that has
never been heard before. A joke will be
told. A clever argument will be
made. The cleverness, humor, or novelty
will attract attention, catch on, become popular, and the language will be
changed. This is how the word, “bad”,
came to mean good: today the context indicates whether “bad” actually means bad
or good. It would be a fool’s errand to
retranslate every instance where the word, “bad”, means good into good. It is better to try to grasp the idiom. The only way to do that is by becoming an
incessant reader of Greek. One benefit
of the Greek New Testament is that it is completely composed in a very brief
period of time: there is not much opportunity for idiomatic shifts. Similarly, the translation of the Old
Testament into Greek tends to suppress idiomatic shifts, because of the
compression of time. Moreover, the
Israelites and Jews built their whole culture around one set of standard
documents, thereby reducing the opportunity for much invention. Still, the Babylonian captivity of 586-516 BC
did much to disrupt this continuity and uniformity. The ensuing conquests of the Persians,
Greeks, and Romans also played a disruptive role. In the writing of the Nicene statement of
faith we see a somewhat different flavor of Greek than that found in the New
Testament. Modern Greek liturgical
practice is even more different still.
We are indeed lucky to find a commonly used word that shows no evidence
of change.
In a downward step, we find that
even when lexicons reach a common conclusion, yet the concordance shows
variation, we may have our work cut out for us.
This appears to be rare. It
appears that the translation was usually made first. Then lexicons and concordances developed as analyses
of the translation. So we have lexicons
that always prefer King James English and concordances from the same period
that draw exclusively from the King James Bible. The result is not a disconnect between
concordance and lexicon; rather, the problem is coping with archaic words and
meanings like discomfit. Still the
comparison between lexicon and concordance may very well clarify, highlight, or
pinpoint the problem.
At the other extreme lie those words
for which a single version has dozens upon dozens of variant translations, many
English words explaining one poor little Greek word. In this situation we suspect that the
translator, lexicographer, or concordance compiler and analyst simply failed to
grasp the central idea of the word.
Perhaps there wasn’t enough evidence.
Perhaps the usage in other literature was confusing. Perhaps the word had taken on philosophical,
technical meaning. Perhaps the New
Testament authors, especially Christ Himself, had infused an old word with new
meaning. Perhaps we had or have lost the
cultural key to understanding. Perhaps
our own culture blinds us to the obvious, so that we cannot see the forest for
the trees, even though they are right in front of us.
Some grammars are so obtuse that one
has to believe that the author is struggling to relearn a lost language, and
doesn’t understand it very well either: so he has trouble explaining it. Fortunately, Greek grammars are relatively
fresh and easy to understand.
Change
We have noted that language is a
moving target. This means that
translation must be fluid, always moving, ever changing, constantly struggling
to grasp meaning. What is the benefit of
a word like ineffable, if its meaning is so far outside of contemporary use
that, even after memorizing the definition, its impact in a sentence eludes us? A translator and a translation must engage
you, the reader. It must have meaning
for you, else it has no meaning at all.
I may pick the perfect denotative and explicit translation for me: it
makes no difference. Have I found the
perfect denotative and explicit translation for you? Only you can determine that. You must tell me that. In a world that is reduced to “texts” and
“tweets” we must find a way to bridge communication gaps. No one can accomplish this without your
active assistance. Your contribution is
essential. Feedback is essential. Such feedback cannot afford the luxury of
being set in stone: it must remain ever fluid, mindful of the demand for
accurate communication and mutual understanding. Tomorrow’s perfect denotative and explicit
translation may well have changed. You
decide.
Consistency
No, we are not consistent. The word, “and”, occurs so frequently in
Greek that it is annoying. We could
resort to the mechanism of replacing every “and” with &. Maybe that would make it less annoying. We chose not to do that. If “and” is used to connect a series of
nouns, or nominal phrases we chose to translate A and B and C and D, with the
more commonly acceptable A, B, C, and D.
Yes, we try to remember to use the Oxford comma. If the construction is appropriate we might
try: both … and, even though … even so, not only … but also. If the repetition is unavoidable, we might
throw in an, “as well as”, or “too”, for variety’s sake. At the beginning of sentences, we usually
drop “and” altogether, and settle for a capital letter and a period to define
the beginning and end of sentences. We
hope you will forgive our inconsistency.
BTW, perhaps you have a better idea.
The definite article presents a similar
challenge. There is no indefinite
article in Greek; instead a word like “any” or “one” must be pressed into
service. Still, the absence or presence
of “the” presents a thorny obstacle.
Consider a phrase like, “and
injustice of men, the the truth in injustice hold fast,” which is part of verse
18. The double definite article makes no
sense whatsoever in English. The first
article introduces the following phrase as adjectival to men, “the sort of
men….” We would say who. The second article makes truth specific. It is not generic truth, but The Truth, God’s
Truth that is in view. Suffice it to
say, that sometimes we must invent definite articles from thin air to make sense
of a sentence, while at other times we must pretend that the definite article
is not present, for the same reason. In
any case our translation is less than perfectly consistent, or else the
definite article would be represented in every case.
Innovation
In our pursuit of the denotative or
explicit meaning we used other techniques besides lexicons and concordances.
When translations seemed archaic, we
broke out the English language dictionary and thesaurus and went in search of a
more modern word that seemed to fit the meaning. We picked the word that seemed best, but that
does not mean that the word we picked is best.
Do the words we picked communicate with you?
If a word was a composite, we also
chased down the meaning of the root word, and attempted to grasp how the
meaning of the composite might have developed from the root. Sometimes we made serendipitous discoveries,
while at other times we fell flat on our faces.
On other occasions we tried to get a
feel for the meaning of a word from its cognates: deriving the meanings of
adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs from one another.
If a word seemed to have a tired
worn-out meaning, to have lost its engagement with reality due to excess
familiarity, we attempted to employ a word that would challenge, confront, and
disrupt thinking so that we would find it necessary to slow down and restore
some energy to the word.
Conclusion
In the final analysis, this is not
about me making a translation for you, or even about me making a good
translation. This is about involving you
in the translation process so that we become partners in communication. So that you challenge me, as I hope that I
challenge you. I believe that this is
what Paul is talking about when he writes of mutual encouragement.
One last point lest I be accused of
plagiarism. Nothing I write is my own,
everything came from somebody else. We
put few things in quotes because everything is a quotation. Indeed, since we are working with documents
and ideas of such great antiquity, we have difficulty in seeing how anyone can
claim them as their own or apply a copyright to them. They all belong to God. We make no claim of our own.
[1] If
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No rights are reserved. They are
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