MetaCatholic

Since I rarely look at it, I’ve only just noticed that the New American Bible is the only English translation, at least as far as I know, which doesn’t try to translate the various “Amen” sayings of Jesus (ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν) into English, but leaves them beginning “Amen I say to you” (or in the fourth gospel, “Amen, Amen …).

This is of course something characteristic of the sayings of Jesus in the gospel tradition, an echo in Jeremias’ terms of Jesus’ ipsissima vox. The unusual phrase prefaces no-one else’s words in early Christian or Jewish traditions as far as we yet know. Even if subsequent discoveries show it is not unique it is reasonable to call it a characteristic, and singular style of speech.

It has often struck me as odd, however, that the mainstream of English translation has chosen to translate it into English with variations of “Truly, (truly) I tell you”. After all it already stood in the Greek New Testament as one of the rare untranslated set Aramaic or Hebrew words, and one of the few that receives no additional editorial translation. It appear to have passed over quickly into the liturgical use of the church in much the same way it was used in the Jewish liturgical tradition, so that neither its meaning, nor the oddity of using it to preface a sentence was unknown.

The Vulgate continued this tradition with “Amen dico tibi / vobis” leaving the Amen untranslated, and so it continued as far as I can see to the late medieval period. From the versions I’ve checked Tyndale is the first who makes the change with “Verely I say vnto you” making its appearance.

I don’t know enough about other languages, and I’d be interested to hear from someone who does, although the Luther Bible tradition is like the English – “Wahrlich, ich sage euch” and modern French Bibles go in the same direction.

It seems to me, however, that the choice of the gospel writers was not to translate this word, but embed the original in their Greek, knowing that its use in the worshipping and praying tradition of the church vouchsafed its meaning, significance and idiosyncracy to the gospel tradition. In choosing to translate it, the English Bible tradition split that connection apart, made a translation choice the gospel writers had rejected, and created a mistaken impression of Bible English that has weakened the memory of Jesus’ characteristic and singular way of speaking.

So three cheers to the NAB for getting this one right, or perhaps two and a half — I’d have preferred “Amen, I tell you”