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John 1:1 (In THE beginning)

Posted: April 14th, 2014, 10:40 pm
by Danny Diskin
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος
This is always translated as "In the beginning", but from the little I
understand of Greek grammar, one shouldn't append the definite article in
English if the article is absent in Greek.

Is this "hyer-literal" translation accurate:
"In origin was the Word"
http://catholic-resources.org/John/Outl ... ologue.htm
ὅτι ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς ὁ διάβολος ἁμαρτάνει
"For the devil sins from the beginning."
The devil has an article, in both Greek and English, but again, beginning
has none.

Apologies for a simplistic question, I'm only two words into the text and
I'm confused.
Can someone clear this up for me?
Danny Diskin

Re: John 1:1 "At the start ..."

Posted: April 15th, 2014, 1:38 am
by Stephen Hughes
The "the" is needed in English to make your translation sound like normal English.

As you learn a new language, you will also become more aware of some of the rules for the languages you speak natively.

Learning to be a professional translator requires that you learn the grammar of both of the languages that you intend to qualify in.

To look at it from another point of view for a moment, the phrase "In beginning ..." has a different meaning in English. Look at these examples:
In beginning to study medicine, she was one step closer to fulfilling her dream of becoming a missionary.
In beginning his homework, he showed his resolve to be a good student.


The Greek that you are trying to translate doesn't mean what "In beginning (a verbal form) smth / to + base form of the verb" does in English. The English phrase "In beginning smth / to + verb" could be expressed by a participle (a verbal form) in Greek.

It is not common English idiom to use "in" with a point in time. "In" is used with long periods of time like, "In summer" or "In July". The normal English preposition used with an instant is "at", as in "At 5pm...", "At the end of a ..."

I think that "At the start ..." is the clearest English that this phrase could be translated as.

In origin...

Posted: April 15th, 2014, 3:14 am
by Stephen Hughes
I'm sorry. I was so involved in answering, that I missed a detail.

In English the phrase "In origin ..." would possibly nean "With regard to his origins ...". A phrase like "In experience as a jockey, he outclassed the others.". A different preposition (κατά) would be used to express that meaning of the English word "in" in Greek and probably Greek would use a more specific word depending on which type of "origin" was being thought of (birth, race, social status, region). The meaning of the English word "origin" is broad and flexible - that leads to it being a bit ambiguous.

Re: John 1:1 (In THE beginning)

Posted: April 15th, 2014, 6:21 am
by Barry Hofstetter
Danny, in addition to Stephen's excellent comments:

1) Please make every effort to be learning the language. You'll find lots of help here if that is your approach.

2) Greek is a different language than English. While that sounds like a truism, many people as beginners don't realize that it not only means different vocabulary items, but different ways of expressing meaning, what we call syntax. These are not equivalent to the way we say things in English. One example is the definite article. Greek sometimes uses it when English doesn't (as with proper names, ὁ Ἰησοῦς), and sometimes leaves it out where English would use it (as here). Questions like this are usually easily resolved as you progress in your study of the language.

Re: John 1:1 (In THE beginning)

Posted: April 15th, 2014, 6:34 am
by Jonathan Robie
I'd like to add a few things: you need a grammar to learn how things like the article work in Greek. If a noun is clearly definite in the given context, Greek does not need the article, and in these cases an English translation will generally use the word "the".

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος does not mean "in a beginning was the Word", it means "in the beginning was the Word". The writer did not feel the need to use the article, because he felt it was sufficiently clear that there was only one beginning. Of course, if we knew that a particular writer believed that there were many beginnings, then we would be justified in translating this as "a" beginning. The grammar does not clear up every possible misunderstanding unambiguously; if there were doubt about John's beliefs here, it might be necessary to read more of John's writings to learn his views.

Take a look at the next part of the sentence: καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν. You probably wouldn't translate τὸν θεόν as "the God", we just say "God" in English.

Working through a beginning grammar is important if you want to understand the language. This part of Micheal Palmer's grammar may be helpful to you: http://greek-language.com/grammar/07.html. But it's Lesson 7, I suggest you start with Lesson 1.

Re: John 1:1 (In THE beginning)

Posted: April 15th, 2014, 8:38 am
by Barry Hofstetter
Jonathan Robie wrote: Working through a beginning grammar is important if you want to understand the language. This part of Micheal Palmer's grammar may be helpful to you: http://greek-language.com/grammar/07.html. But it's Lesson 7, I suggest you start with Lesson 1.
Excellent advice, Jonathan (simply making concrete what I said in the abstract above). I really like the way Palmer starts his chapter on the article:
English has two different kinds of articles: a definite article (the word “the”) and an indefinite article (the words “a” and “an”). Greek does not distinguish between these two types of articles. For that reason the usage of the article in Greek has some striking differences from the word “the” in English. While “the” is often the best translation for the Greek article, the Greek article is used in some contexts where we clearly would not use “the” in English. In such cases, the Greek article must be left untranslated.
And then goes on to give specific examples. Of course, even more fun is Latin, which has neither a definite nor an indefinite article... :shock: :o