Kata Markon

[Lou Heron <heronblu AT yahoo.com>]

I have a tyro’s question about Mark’s gospel. One often hears it said that Mark’s Greek is crude and obviously that of someone not very comfortable with the language. Even I can see that his constructions often appear clumsy and that he employs colloquialisms. Nevertheless, some of the crude constructions and unusual usages seem to serve Mark’s purpose very effectively. Based on this, I have been attempting as an exercise to translate Mark in such a way as to reflect not only what he says but how he says it. I had hoped to allow his voice to sound different from that of, for instance, Luke. I thought I could do so by constructing sentences which were true to the original but which sounded conversational and with vulgarisms rather than polished and sophisticated. This turns out to be rather difficult, at least for a beginner like me. Mark’s word choices seem often (but, perhaps, not always) to be those of a sophisticated writer of the language rather than those of someone searching for the correct term. My assumption that he would generally use a simpler and less precise word rather than a more subtle one does not seem to be working.  His sentence structures also seem often to only appear clumsy but actually to serve a particular purpose.

I would appreciate the opinion of those whose knowledge of Mark and of Greek is superior to mine regarding whether Mark’s gospel seems to be written by a person not particularly adept at using the language. Does he appear to you to be thinking in Aramaic and then translating into Greek to write? Do you suppose that the view of Jesus we get from Mark accurately reflects a particular view of Jesus, or is it heavily influenced by linguistic difficulties?  Could Mark be a sort of J.D. Salinger, giving profound messages with language which seems deceptively mundane and unskillful?

Thanks in advance to all for your assistance.

Yours in Christ,

Walter Little

heronblu AT yahoo.com

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