As readers of this blog probably know, recently I have been learning koine Greek, the language in which the New Testament was originally written. A few weeks ago, I was pleased to find that I could read the first verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of John as John himself had written it. Here it is, followed by a literal English translation:
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
In beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the God, and God was the Word.
Compare this with the English translation provided by the New International Version (NIV):
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Comparing the two versions of the verse, it is hard not to notice that Greek and English do not use the definite article (the in English) in quite the same way. Perhaps most striking is "the God"
(τὸν θεόν--ton Theon) in the Greek. This sounds odd in English, but my understanding is that in Greek the definite article can be used optionally with proper nouns, unlike in English (for example, we wouldn't say "the Peter").
However, what is perhaps most interesting to me is the fact that the Greek and English versions have nearly the same word order. This is interesting because, unlike English, Greek is not what linguists call a word order dependent language. In word order dependent languages, the grammatical function of a word (particularly a noun) is determined by its place in a sentence. Thus, in the case of the sentences John kissed Mary and Mary kissed John, we know that in the first sentence John is the subject of the sentence, while in the second sentence John is the object of the sentence. We know this because in the first sentence John appears before the verb, while in the second sentence John appears after the verb. However, Greek does not work in this way. Greek is an example of an inflected language. An inflected language is a language in which the grammatical function of a word is determined by its form. For example, in the case of certain Greek nouns, if they end with -os, they are functioning as the subject of a sentence. On the other hand, if they end with -on, they are functioning as the object of a sentence. Consequently, in a language like Greek, it doesn't matter in what order words appear in a sentence. Therefore, it is a little surprising the words in the Greek and English versions are in almost the same order.
Nevertheless, there is one obvious difference in word order between the Greek and English. The English version of the verse ends "...and the Word was with God," but the Greek version ends "...and God was the Word." I don't think there is any real difference in the fundamental meaning of the English and the Greek--both are asserting that the Word (Jesus) was divine--but there does seem to be a slight difference in emphasis. Interestingly, when the ancient scholar Jerome translated the Bible into Latin in the late fourth century AD, thus creating the Vulgate, which served as the official Catholic version of the Bible for centuries, he followed the same word order as in the original Greek:
In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum.
In beginning was Word and Word was with God, and God was Word. (literal English translation--note that there are no definite articles in Latin, unlike Greek or English)
This is intriguing since Latin, like Greek, is an inflected language. Therefore, there was no reason inherent in the language itself for Jerome to use the same word order in Latin as was used in the original Greek. Perhaps he was trying to as faithful to the original language as possible.
Image of the Apostle John by Girolamo Troppa from commons.wikimedia.com
[A note to my readers: please forgive the inconsistency in the font in this blogpost. I had some technical problems with it.]