The most helpful resource that I found whilst translating the first eighteen verses of St. John’s Gospel was also the most detrimental. At some moments, comparing my own translation to others could lead to a better understanding of the overall passage, but it could also become more muddled if the ot translator and I had different ideas as to what the original text meant. There were, of course, other times where both the other translations and mine came to the same idea, but worded it differently, which is simply aesthetic.
In its totality, St. John’s Gospel was a challenge to translate, through comparing, searching for vocabulary, and tying everything together in a way that didn’t sound like a child wrote it, I was given a deeper understanding of finding meaning where one won’t be given definitive guidelines, and how to make a translation one’s own. St. John’s, as l’ve translated it, starts with “In the beginning there was the word, and the word was of God, and God was the word”. Translation E matches closely with mine, the differences being “the Word was with God” (E, 1) and mine saying “of God”, and “the Word was God” (E, 1), mine saying “God was the Word”.
The latter difference shows different emphasis. Translation E is emphasizing the Word itself with less emphasis on its divinity, whereas mine has focused on God, and the Word being “of God”. These are slight differences, and essentially communicate the same idea. However, in translation F there is a more glaring divergence. While it starts with “before the world was created, the Word already existed”, which is rather similar to my translation and, it continues to say “he was with God, and he was the same as God” (F, 1).
Instead of repeating “Word”, this translation has given the Word a gender, and has personified it. In my translation, and in translation E, the Word is given a pronoun, and eventually the name Jesus Christ, but not until much later. Translation F has immediately articulated that the Word is a man “with God” (F, 2), leaving no room to assume the Word is anything else. My interpretation of loyos, meaning the Word, is indeed much the same as that of translation F, and of E, that the Word does mean Jesus Christ.
However, introducing the Word as a “he” so early on prompts unnecessary assumptions. The Word” must be understood as “the Word”, it is the loyos that has always existed with God, has always been present, and becomes Jesus Christ through his being born on Earth. While Toyos, the Word, he, and Jesus Christ are all the same entity, I let Toyos remain “the word” for a while more before introducing it as a man, Jesus Christ. Essentially, I wrote my translation with the idea of the progression of loyos. As Jesus didn’t start out as a man on earth, as the verses one and two state, I didn’t want him to start out as a man in my translation.
I wanted to express that evolution and whatever way I could, so loyos remained an “it” for the first portion of my translation before becoming a “he” in verse 10, and finally being named as Jesus Christ in verse 17. Verse ten is where I have decided to introduce the Word as a man. By this point, loyos has evolved from the Word to the Light, and it is verse ten that loyos is introduced to the world as a man. Although worded differently, translation E and F both communicate the same idea as my translation does.
E says “He was in the world that had its being through him, and the world did not know him” (E, 10), and F says “the Word then, was in the world. God made the world though him, yet the world did not know him” (F, 10). My translation agrees with the others in that, royos, or the Word, came into the world in which was created through the loyos, but the world does not receive it. The significance this passage had for me was that this is where it was clearest to me that the loyos was Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus was given to the world and rejected, the loyos also has been.
This is the beginning of his story, even though he has been with God and the koguos (which I and the other translations have identified as “the world”) forever, it is only in this instance that he has been introduced to mankind. Verse 10 makes the necessary connection between the loyos and the story of Jesus Christ which makes this verse the necessary point in which to introduce the Word, which is loyos, as a man and to not separate them as two different entities, simply by starting to use “he”. The most interesting verse to translate was verse thirteen.
Not because of its difficulty, or its grammar, but because there are so many ways it can be translated. Translation E translates it as “who was born not of human stock, or urge of the flesh, or will of man, but of God himself” (E, 13). Translation F says “they did not become God’s children by natural means, by being born as the children of a human father; God himself was their father” (F, 13). I wrote my translation as “those not of blood, and not of the pleasures of the flesh, and not of the will of man, but those of God’s creation”.
This verse refers to those who believe through the loyos, Jesus Christ. What I found interesting about this verse was that the meaning didn’t change at all between translations, and the differences between them seemed to be purely aesthetic. Translation F seems to make its point in the most straightforward way in saying that, no, these people weren’t made through human desires, but by God. Translation E and my translation were more similar, in that both of the translations emphasize that these people are not made of blood or flesh, nor are they born human wants, they are the creations of God.
In writing my translation, I emphasized these points because it seemed to me more poetic that just outright saying “these people weren’t made by mankind, but of God”. None of these translations take any understanding of the verse away, so there’s a significant amount of room to make this passage as aesthetically pleasing to the translator as possible. Translating the first eighteen verses of St. John’s Gospel forced me to pay very close attention to how texts, whether they already exist in another translation or even the creation of a completely original text.
I say this because, as I was translating, there were times where it felt as if I was the author. In translating, the words don’t automatically make sense. One if forced to mold the words they’re given to create a story or text. Even though the words weren’t originally mine, I felt as if I had certain ownership of my translation, as I had to create my own work. Translating is very much a work of art and takes much more skill than I had previously anticipated, as the creativity it requires far outweighs the activity of simply turning Greek into English.
