complete verse (Luke 13:11)

Following are a number of back-translations of Luke 13:11:

  • Noongar: “A woman had an evil spirit and she had been sick 18 years. She was stooped and could not stand up.” (Source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
  • Uma: “There, there was a woman, she had been sick for eighteen years because she was possessed by a demon. That woman was hunchbacked, she was not able to stand up straight.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “There was a woman there who had a sickness caused by a demon for eighteen years. She was bent-over and could not straighten her body.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And there was in the church a woman whose back was bent over because she was afflicted with a demon. It was eighteen years that her back had been over, and she could no longer straighten up even a little bit.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “There was also there a woman whom a evil-spirit had hunched-over for eighteen years and she was not able-to-straighten-up.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “There was a woman there who for eighteen years had been being make ill by an evil spirit. She was now really hunchbacked, no longer able to straighten out.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)

Translation commentary on Luke 13:11

Exegesis:

kai idou gunē lit. ‘and behold, a woman…,’ hence, ‘and there was a woman.’

pneuma echousa astheneias lit. ‘having a spirit of sickness,’ i.e. ‘possessed by a spirit that caused sickness,’ or, ‘having a sickness caused by a spirit.’ The spirit and the sickness are conceived as being one, cf. 11.14.

etē deka oktō ‘eighteen years,’ accusative of duration.

kai ēn sugkuptousa ‘and she was bent double,’ i.e. as a result of the sickness.

kai mē dunamenē anakupsai eis to panteles ‘and completely unable to straighten herself up.’ eis to panteles is best understood as going with dunamenē.

anakuptō (also 21.28) ‘to raise oneself up,’ ‘to straighten oneself,’ less probably ‘to lift up the head’ (cf. Lagrange, The Four Gospels – a New Translation).

eis to panteles ‘completely,’ ‘wholly,’ ‘at all.’

Translation:

To have a spirit of infirmity often is to be described by, ‘to have (or, to be possessed/entered by) a spirit/demon that makes (a person) ill,’ or with a resultative clause, ‘so that one becomes ill’ (cf. East and Toraja-Sa’dan), cf. also, ‘to be the host of a spirit that took away her strength’ (Shona 1966). In Tzeltal the idiom is, ‘to be molested by the devil’; Ekari uses a form that may mean both ‘having seen a spirit’ and ‘a spirit having seen her,’ either event being thought of as a cause of illness. For spirit cf. 9.39, for infirmity see “disease” in 4.40.

She was bent over …, sometimes introduced by, ‘because of that,’ ‘so that.’ Idiom may require another subject, e.g. ‘her back was bent’ (Bahasa Indonesia, similarly Sranan Tongo, lit. ‘was-broken’), ‘her body was crooked’ (Batak Toba).

Straighten herself, or, ‘her body/back,’ or, “stand up straight” (New English Bible, similarly Sranan Tongo).

Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.