[B-Greek] Vamvas Greek Bible

Vasileios Tsialas tsialas78 at hotmail.com
Fri Feb 4 10:13:11 EST 2011


Vamvas' translation has been very valuable for many decades because of the lack of other translations. It's a formal equivalence translation into "heavy" Kathareuousa, according to the socio-political situation of his time. Because, sadly, the linguistic debate of Modern Greek, as it happens with the current debate on the polytonic system, is connected with political trends-generally speaking, among the right wing older forms are preferred and and among the left wing modern forms are preferred. 
 
As a formal equivalence translation (and with the assistance of "heavy" Kathareuousa), it generally keeps the word order, replacing some really obsolete grammatical forms (as infinitives) or words with newer ones. Being a conservative translation, many times it avoids translating some structures, as long as they seem familiar to the reader, that is, the educated Greek who uses Kathareuousa.  For instance, Vamvas says: "Παν κλήμα εν εμοί μη φέρον καρπόν" (John 15:2). Here he keeps the dative because it is optically known to the educated Greek, but I really wonder if it is understandable also.
 
As far as I know, the Old Testament was actually translated not by Vamvas but by the distinguished philhellene Lowndes, and in some cases I have noted some renderings that evoke the King James Translation (είχεν instead of έκτισεν in Pr 8:22). In other cases the word selection brings to mind the Septuagint (εποίησεν instead of  εδημιούργησεν or έκτισεν in Ge 1:1) Generally, it is seems to me an independent work that just took into account the previous works. I feel that the New Testament is also independent from the King James. But I don't really have much to say on this because I haven't made any serious use of the King James, and I don't plan to do so. 
 
 
Vasileios Tsialas,
 
Athens, Greece

 
> From: cwconrad2 at mac.com
> Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2011 09:16:03 -0500
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> CC: suzmccarth at yahoo.com
> Subject: [B-Greek] Vamvas Greek Bible
> 
> Suzanne McCarthy, who has previously had nice things to say about
> the Vamvas Greek version of the GNT, notes in her blog today
> (http://powerscourt.blogspot.com/2011/02/vamva-greek-bible.html)
> that the whole version, including the OT, is accessible online at:
> 
> http://www.gospel.gr/
> 
> For those who don't know about it, I cite from Suzanne's notice:
> 
> "This 19th century version of the Bible by Neofitos Vamvas, 
> a distinguished linguist and noted Bible scholar, was published 
> in 1850 with the collaboration of British and Foreign Bible 
> Society (BFBS). It was not accepted by the Greek Orthodox 
> Church which continues to use a version of the original 
> Greek New Testament and the Septuagint translation of 
> the Hebrew Bible."
> 
> I guess one would call this a Katharevousa version; for one
> whose Modern Greek is not quite equal to his/her ancient
> Greek (i.e. myself) , this is a delightful version to read.
> 
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> 
> 
> 
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