Abstract

When the author of the Gospel of Luke wrote the narrative about Jesus’ story, the majority of the common people could not read it because they were illiterate and could not afford to buy it. In those days, people usually got access to the literature by listening to someone who was literate. Luke also would have known well the main media of communication and the way of delivering his writing. Henry J. Cadbury pointed out four features of Lucan style, which are repetition, variation, distribution, and concentration. These are told to indicate influences of oral tradition.BR In Korea there are many Bible versions, representatively the New Korean Revised Version (1998), the Revised New Korean Standard Version, Common Translation Revised Version (1999), and Seonggyeong (2005). They all have a common purpose in their translation of the Greek New Testament in that they aim at adjusting to the Korean way of writing which is quite different from that of the ancient Greeks. Especially in the Gospel of Luke, the predicate is often located in the early part of the sentence. On the contrary, Koreans place the verb in the latter part of the sentence. Translations in all Korean Bible versions are therefore quite dissimilar to the Greek Bible, the so-called NTGSUP28/SUP chosen here when they are compared against the Greek one.BR I thus set up several principles for translating the NTGSUP28/SUP into Korean versions with the attempt to reconstruct the way early Christians comprehended when they heard the gospel of Luke two thousand years ago as follows: 1) The sentence is transcribed into the Korean version following the one breath rule while the reader is reading. In early Christian churches, a reader must have read out phrase by phrase, taking a breath before the audience because he could not keep on reading a sentence without breathing in and out. 2) The sentence is decoded according to the order it has been written. I try not to follow the Korean way of writing. It turns out the gospel of Luke was composed by means of oral devices and excellent utterances from the mouths of Jesus and the narrator. 3) I pursue the dynamic equivalence between the source text and Korean audiences. Koreans have the custom of using honorific expressions to convey respect to a teacher or older people. When the narrator calls Jesus, Jesus is called by his name with the suffix nim added to signal respect. When Jesus speaks to anyone whether it is his disciples, the crowd, the Pharisees, or etc., he uses honorific speech or mediates their level using hasipsiyo or haseyo instead of the imperative haera which is used towards lower people. 4) I try to preserve the unique features of Lucan style, which contains a lot of languages and phrases known to be influenced by the Septuagint.BR All Korean Bible versions rarely show a good command of literary Greek when choosing Korean words to transcribe various Greek words. Early Christians were evangelized and filled with the Holy Spirit not by reading but simply by listening to the Scripture. I hope many Koreans can be led in the same way of hearing to experience every bit of the gospel of Luke.

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