Mark 1:1
The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
notes
The first verse is straightforward to translate. Similar to John's Gospel, Mark begins with Arche, the Greek word for beginning. John added en so that his Gospel starts with "In the beginnning" echoing the words of Genesis. The author's intent here seems to be to title the whole work that will follow.
I have translated the Greek euangeliou as "Good News" which is its literal meaning. The word "gospel" could also be used. Gospel is the Middle English word from the Old English godspel (god=good, spel=news). As the word gospel was itself a translation of the Greek, I opted to move the word euangeliou to present English usage.
While some early editions of Mark do not include uiou Theou, meaning "the son of God," some do. For this reason, some Bibles translate this portion of the verse and leave it in brackets, while others translate this verse and leave it in the text as I have decided to do here.
peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor + King of Peace Episcopal Church
kingofpeace.blogspot.com
notes
The first verse is straightforward to translate. Similar to John's Gospel, Mark begins with Arche, the Greek word for beginning. John added en so that his Gospel starts with "In the beginnning" echoing the words of Genesis. The author's intent here seems to be to title the whole work that will follow.
I have translated the Greek euangeliou as "Good News" which is its literal meaning. The word "gospel" could also be used. Gospel is the Middle English word from the Old English godspel (god=good, spel=news). As the word gospel was itself a translation of the Greek, I opted to move the word euangeliou to present English usage.
While some early editions of Mark do not include uiou Theou, meaning "the son of God," some do. For this reason, some Bibles translate this portion of the verse and leave it in brackets, while others translate this verse and leave it in the text as I have decided to do here.
peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor + King of Peace Episcopal Church
kingofpeace.blogspot.com
posted by King of Peace at 8:24 AM
2 Comments:
The TNIV relegates uiou theou to a footnote. This is the first major English translation to do so as far as I'm aware.
I have two concerns with this rendering:
(1) First, if it is to be kept as a sentence fragment, shouldn't we set it as a heading (i.e., a different typeface and paragraph spacing) on the page? That is how headings are usually represented in plain English communications. Otherwise, it seems to me that it would not be inappropriate to supply This is the . . . or something like that at the beginning to make it a complete sentence.
(2) How should we render Christou? Many people think of "Christ" as Jesus' last name. For this reason, I suggest going with . . . good news of Jesus the Messiah.
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