Orthodox Icons are not drawings or creations of imagination. They are in fact writings of things not of this world. Icons can represent our Lord Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. They can also represent the Holy Trinity, Angels, the Heavenly hosts, and even events. Orthodox icons, unlike Western pictures, change the perspective and form of the image so that it is not naturalistic. This is done so that we can look beyond appearances of the world, and instead look to the spiritual truth of the holy person or event. (Source )
Following are a number of back-translations of Luke 22:21:
Nyongar: “But see! The one who betrays me sits eating among us!” (Source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
Uma: “‘But see, the person who will sell me, he is here now, eating with me!” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “But look,’ said Isa, ‘the person who is soon going to betray me is our (incl.) companion sitting here with us at the table.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “Understand this,’ said Jesus, ‘that the one who turns me over to my enemies is one of our (incl.) companions sitting here with us.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “‘But I also tell you that the one who will betray me is here eating-with (us).” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “But now, my companion in eating is indeed the one who will lead the ones who want to kill me.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Willy Wiedmann, the artist, commented on this picture: “In spite of some difficulty, and unlike Leonardo da Vinci [see here ] I did not set my last supper in a theatrical scene with Jesus in the center behind an elongated table with all the disciples, with two at each end so that that there are 11 seated behind the table. And not like the panel by Juan de Juanes (1623-79) [see here ] in which the six disciples left and right are very dynamic figures. And also not like Martin Schongauer’s Last Supper [see here ] with a slightly shorter table (also incidentally very similar to Juanes in the attitudes of the figures) and two figures seen from the back in the foreground of the panel. Instead I have given the Master the middle place to the foreground, with his back to us to finally leave the controversial Jesus-existential questions unanswered. Slightly symbolically it means that he is leaving his world. The iris color is meant to transfer the rainbow to Jesus, that God once linked to Noah (my kingdom is not of this world). I attempted to present answers that correspond to the characters of each individual.”
Image and text taken from the Wiedmann Bible. For more information about the images and ways to adopt them, see here .
For other images of Willy Wiedmann paintings in TIPs, see here.
Painting by Wang Suda 王肅達 (1910-1963),
Copyright by the Catholic University Peking, China.
Text under painting translated from Literary Chinese into English:
Beginning of the Holy Communion
You have this as food and this is my body.
Image taken from Chinese Christian Posters . For more information on the “Ars Sacra Pekinensis” school of art, see this article , for other artworks of that school in TIPs, see here.
plēn idou ‘yet see.’ For plēn cf. on 6.24; for idou emphatic introduction of what follows cf. on 1.20.
hē cheir tou paradidontos me met’ emou ‘the hand of him who hands me over is with me,’ i.e. his hand receives bread and wine from my hand. The phrase denotes intimate fellowship. For paradidōmi cf. on 9.44.
Translation:
The hand of him who … is with me on the table is stylistically incongruous in that it first mentions the part of the whole (“hand of him” implying a reference to the person), next the whole itself, i.e. the person referred to by “me”. It may be better idiom to mention the part twice, “the hand of the man who … is on the table with mine” (The Four Gospels – a New Translation, and cf. New English Bible), or, .’.. is beside my hand on the table,’ or to mention the whole twice, “the one who … is here at the table with me” (Good News Translation), ‘the one who … is here eating with me’ (Navajo, similarly Tzeltal). A combination of the two solutions may also be possible, cf. ‘the one by whose hand I will be delivered up is with me at the table’ (Willibrord).
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.
