Tell me more about the Orthodox church - Page 4

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Originally Posted by mamabadger

That is unfortunately true.
Some people I know look at specific verses as guidelines, when they are unfamiliar with a translation. One is John 2:4, which reads in the KJV as "Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come."
According to scholars of ancient Greek, the most literally accurate translation would be "Dear lady (or something like that - it is the word for woman in the diminutive form, denoting affection) what is that to you and to me?"
Some versions translate it more or less like this, but some Protestant versions (maybe out of a desire to discourage undue reverence for Mary) translate it as "What have you to do with my work, woman?" or "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" or even "Woman, don't tell me what to do!" Those not only miss the intent of the words, they do not even translate the phrase accurately. We have to be a bit careful of what translation we are reading.
Sorry for the long digression.

Another is Psalm 1:1. If it says something along the lines of "Blessed is the man..." Thumbs up. If it's "Happy are they..." thumbs down. Of course, that's an over simplification, but it generally works. That's because the Orthodox interpret the "man" in Psalm 1 as being Christ himself. When you get the inclusive language folks tinkering with translations, you lose that.

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Originally Posted by lilyka

Part of it mght be that we are only recently using English. I am guessing when the older priest reads a prayer or something in English he is actually reading it in Greek and translating in his head as he says it. Who knows.

Nope. If that's gonna happen (the back and forth between English and Greek), the priest will have a bilingual liturgy book in front of him with Greek & English on facing pages. My priest has served at plenty of Greek parishes in his time, with the bilingual thing going on, and he's given a liturgy book such as I described. A priest will NOT do his own translating in his head for liturgical texts on the spot! The Orthodox do NOT do that! There are plenty of bilingual liturgy books. Just check out the Light & Life catalog.

[lilyka]

interesting.

I suppose we just have a lot of approved translations or liturgy then. Just like there are a lot of approved translations of prayer books. all the prayers are essentially the same just variations in translation. I suppose it depends on how much variation in language the powers that be choose to accept. ultimately it is up them to decide on how many official translations they want or are willing to accept. Am I understanding that right?