John 10:9

A couple weeks ago, the Daily Dose of Latin went over John 10:9:

ego sum ostium per me si quis introierit salvabitur et ingredietur et egredietur et pascua inveniet

"I am the door.  If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture." [ESV]

The foreignness of "ingredietur et egredietur" caught my attention, and I realized that there's an echo of Psalm 121 here.  Although the order is reversed, "go in and out" also appears in Psalm 121:8:  "The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore" [ESV].  There's also a similarity between "be[ing] saved" and the repeated יִשְׁמֹר in the last two verses of Psalm 121, which the NKJV translates as "shall preserve":  "7 The LORD shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.  8 The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore."

John 10:4-5

About a month ago, I read John 10 in the ESV after having run across a reference to it in The Heath Anthology of American Literature, and I noticed a contrast between parts of verses 4 and 5.  Talking about a shepherd, Jesus says, "'the sheep follow him...  A stranger they will not follow.'"  The structure is inverted in the second clause (with the direct object coming first), emphasizing this difference.

I doubt that the word order in the original Greek holds this significance, though, because Greek is a more inflected language than English and word order doesn't matter as much.  In Greek, these clauses are:  τὰ πρόβατα αὐτῷ ἀκολουθεῖ (the sheep him follow) and ἀλλοτρίῳ δὲ οὐ μὴ ἀκολουθήσουσιν (a stranger but not they will follow).

The NIV and NKJV both translate these clauses with the same basic structure:  "his sheep follow him... they will never follow a stranger" and "the sheep follow him... they will by no means follow a stranger," respectively, but this inverted word order is present in my German New Testament, where these clauses are "die Schafe folgen ihm nach" and "Einem Fremden aber folgen sie nicht nach."

John 10:11

I've been following along in the Daily Dose of Greek's series on John.  Last week, I noticed an interesting feature specific to the Latin Vulgate translation of John 10:11:  "Ego sum pastor bonus bonus pastor animam suam dat pro ovibus."  In the Greek and in all of the other translations I'm following along in, the phrase "the good shepherd" is repeated in the same order:

ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός· ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλὸς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ τίθησιν ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων.

I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Ich bin der gute Hirte.  Der gute Hirte läßt sein Leben für die Schafe.

Je suis le bon berger.  Le bon berger donne sa vie pour ses brebis.

In the Latin, however, the first instance of "the good shepherd" is inverted so that "good" is a post-positive adjective:  "pastor bonus."  Such an inversion results in a chiasm:  "pastor bonus bonus pastor."  The word chiasm comes from Greek letter chi (χ), which resembles a cross.  Between this resemblance to a cross and the context here of the good shepherd's "lay[ing] down his life for the sheep," the Latin Vulgate translation seems to be hinting at the crucifixion.

John 10:12

I wrote about a small feature in John 10 after Good Shepherd Sunday last year, but when I was following along in my French translation during Worship Anew last week, I noticed something else, in verse 12 this time:  

Mais le mercenaire, qui n'est pas le berger, et à qui n'appartiennent pas les brebis, voit venir le loup, abandonne les brebis, et prend la fuite; et le loup les ravit et les disperse.

He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

Where the English and the Greek each have a single word ("flees" "φεύγει"), the French has the phrase "prend la fuite" ("takes flight").  Because the verbs here are opposites ("leave" and "take"), there's a stronger sense of the hired hand's abandoning the sheep.  To some degree, the structural parallelism (verb + direct object) between "abandonne les brebis" and "prend la fuite" also highlights this.

John 10:11

Once again, I'm behind, but while watching the previous week's Worship Anew last week, I noticed a small feature in John 10:11 in my French New Testament.  "Je suis le bon berger.  Le bon berger donne sa vie pour ses brebis."  "I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."  Granted, it's a rather small instance, but in French, there's alliteration in "good shepherd" ("bon berger").  This consonance gives something of an idea of Jesus' perfection.