Sunday, January 26, 2020

Mark 2:3

Although still behind, I'm continuing along in the Daily Dose of Greek series on Mark.  Recently, I watched the video for Mark 2:3:


I think it's significant that αἰρόμενον is a passive participle.  Because it's not a finite verb, the sense of action isn't as strong (it's more incidental than a focus), and because it's passive there's obviously the meaning of the paralytic's being acted upon rather than his acting himself.  Both of these grammatical features illustrate his paralysis.

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Psalm 103:20

While translating an-other Intonation and Responsorium pair from the Kirchen-Gesangbuch, I discovered something I thought interesting.

Here's the text from the Kirchen-Gesangbuch:
I.  Lobet den HErrn, ihr seine Engel, ihr starken Helden.  Halleluja.
R. Die ihr seinen Befehl ausrichtet.  Halleluja.
This is most of Psalm 103:20:  "Bless the LORD, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, [obeying the voice of his word!]"

Where the ESV has "you mighty ones," the German has "ihr starken Helden," which I would translate as either "you mighty heroes" or "you mighty champions."  In French, it's "invincibles porteurs de ses ordres," which combines this with "who do his word" ("die ihr seinen Befehl ausrichtet") and which I would translate as "invincible carriers of His commands."

When I lookt up this passage in the STEP Bible, I discovered that the Hebrew simply uses the adjective "mighty" as a substantive.  The ESV follows this, but both the German and French translations provide a noun for "mighty" (or "invincible") to modify.