The Greek in Luke 4:30 that is translated in English as “passed through (the midst of them)” needs to be translated in greater detail in some languages, including Quetzaltepec Mixe, because it needs to be specified that Jesus first needed to free himself before he could “pass through the midst of them.”
People from his home town rejected him because they could not accept who he claimed to be (image)
“Only qualified, trained leaders know the dharma (truth) yet Jesus made claims that threatened the establishment. He is being chased out of the temple because his people thought him merely a carpenter. They intended to throw him down the cliff but he just passed by.”
Drawing by Sawai Chinnawong who employs northern and central Thailand’s popular distinctive artistic style originally used to depict Buddhist moral principles and other religious themes; explanation by Paul DeNeui. From That Man Who Came to Save Us by Sawai Chinnawong and Paul H. DeNeui, William Carey Library, 2010.
For more images by Sawai Chinnawong in TIPs see here.
disappearance
In Gbaya, the notion of the the disappearance of someone is emphasized in the referenced verses with ɓɛlɛm, an ideophone that expresses the disappearance of someone unnoticed or a sudden action such as holding one’s breath.
Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)
complete verse (Luke 4:30)
Following are a number of back-translations of Luke 4:30:
- Noongar: “but he went through the middle of the people and he went his way.” (Source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
- Uma: “But instead, Yesus walked between the many people, and went away.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
- Yakan: “But Isa passed through the middle of them and left.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
- Western Bukidnon Manobo: “But Jesus just pushed His way through them and left them there.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
- Kankanaey: “But Jesus walked-through the middle of them and left.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
- Tagbanwa: “But Jesus went through the middle of that crowd and left.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Honorary "are" construct denoting God ("go")
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Like a number of other East Asian languages, Japanese uses a complex system of honorifics, i.e. a system where a number of different levels of politeness are expressed in language via words, word forms or grammatical constructs. These can range from addressing someone or referring to someone with contempt (very informal) to expressing the highest level of reference (as used in addressing or referring to God) or any number of levels in-between.
One way Japanese shows different degree of politeness is through the usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme are (され) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, ik-are-ru (行かれる) or “go” is used.
(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
Scriptures Plain & Simple (Luke 4:16-30)
Barclay Newman, a translator on the teams for both the Good News Bible and the Contemporary English Version, translated passages of the New Testament into English and published them in 2014, “in a publication brief enough to be non-threatening, yet long enough to be taken seriously, and interesting enough to appeal to believers and un-believers alike.” The following is the translation of Luke 4:16-30:
Jesus — now a grown man — returned one day
to his hometown of Nazareth,
where he attended synagogue on a Sabbath.
He was handed a Bible and instructed to read from Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord has descended upon me
and has chosen me to proclaim great news for the poor,
to set prisoners free, to heal blindness and suffering,
and to announce this is the Lord’s chosen time.
Jesus closed the Bible and handed it to the leader,
then sat down, and with everyone staring at him, said,
“These words have all come true today.”
Though completely amazed at the teaching of Jesus,
the entire congregation was puzzled and questioned,
“Isn’t this the son of Joseph?”
So Jesus responded:
“You think I’m really the one in need of help,
and you challenge me to work in my own hometown
the same miracles you heard I worked in Capernaum.
Need I remind you — prophets are rejected at home!
“During the time of Elijah the prophet,
there was a drought for three years,
and people were starving everywhere.
But God sent Elijah to help only a foreign widow.
“During the time of Elisha the prophet,
many men in our nation suffered from leprosy,
but God healed only Naaman, who lived in Syria.”
At this, everyone in the synagogue became furious.
They threw Jesus out of their town,
dragged him to the edge of a cliff,
and started to throw him down from there.
But Jesus slipped through the crowd and disappeared.
Sung version of Luke 4
Translation commentary on Luke 4:30
Exegesis:
autos de ‘but he,’ emphatic.
dielthōn dia mesou autōn ‘going through the middle of them.’ This participial phrase carries the main weight in the whole sentence. It presupposes that Jesus had freed himself, and implies that Jesus did not flee but that all the people watched him but did not dare touch him again.
eporeueto ‘he went his way,’ without suggesting that Jesus had a definite place in mind in which to go.
Translation:
Passing through the midst of them … is often rendered as a co-ordinated sentence, “he walked straight through them all, or, through the whole crowd and…” (New English Bible, Phillips, similarly Balinese), ‘he cut-straight-through the midst of those people, then…’ (Javanese).
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.
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