Why "O favoured" instead of "Full of grace?"

[jcrichton]

PS–An aside to Angel. I love your comments and the spirit behind them. But check your Greek. Isn’t it MARANA THA rather than MARAN ATHA ? I certainly agree with the sentiment. The sooner HE gets here the better!

Hi, Rusty!

Both spelling are valid… they simply have a slight difference in meaning:

Maran atha: The Lord is coming.

Marana tha: Come Lord.

…Greek is still Greek to me… I picked up the phrase from my Biblia de Jerusalén (1 Corinthians 16:22): the footnotes offered the meaning and the double usage as Liturgical language in the early Church.

…though not meaning to be repetitious…

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[Mahree]

“Hail, O you who have been endowed with grace and have continued to be so up to this time.”

It would seem to me that “Full of Grace” would summerize that full sentence.

 

[Mahree]

quote from porthos11
“Hail, O you who have been endowed with grace and have continued to be so up to this time.”

It would seem to me that “Full of Grace” would summerize that full sentence.

 

[Manfred]

quote from porthos11
“Hail, O you who have been endowed with grace and have continued to be so up to this time.”

It would seem to me that “Full of Grace” would summerize that full sentence.

The footnote to Luke 1:28 in the New Jerusalem Bible says essentially the same thing.

 

[jcrichton]

“Hail, O you who have been endowed with grace and have continued to be so up to this time.”

It would seem to me that “Full of Grace” would summerize that full sentence.

Hi, Mahree!

…though I am decidedly not a scholar… I surmised the same!

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[ronyodish]

Hi everyone,

Gabriel said to Mary in her Aramaic tongue something very close to this:

“Shlem lekh, malyath taibootha”

This means:

“Peace to you, full of grace”

God bless,

Rony

 

[jcrichton]

Hi everyone,

Gabriel said to Mary in her Aramaic tongue something very close to this:

“Shlem lekh, malyath taibootha”

This means:

“Peace to you, full of grace”

God bless,

Rony

Hi, Rony!

Thank you for your import!

I had wondered if there are any Writings (copies or originals) which would be the actual rendering in Aramaic (not a linguist); I think that, in situations such as this one, having a reference to the language spoken by Jesus would be exceedingly helpful.

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[ronyodish]

Hi, Rony!

Thank you for your import!

I had wondered if there are any Writings (copies or originals) which would be the actual rendering in Aramaic (not a linguist); I think that, in situations such as this one, having a reference to the language spoken by Jesus would be exceedingly helpful.

Maran atha!

Angel

Angel,

The Syriac(Aramaic) Peshitta Bible is a good source to check whenever you want to get very close to the original day to day Aramaic language spoken by Jesus and the people of His time. Sometimes the text in Syriac is more helpful than, or gives additional insight into, the text in Greek.

There is a copy of the Aramaic Peshitta New Testament online. There are also English translations of the Peshitta which you can see in this site such as Younan, Lamsa, etc. Check out Younan on Luke 1:28.

God bless,

Rony

 

[porthos11]

“Hail, O you who have been endowed with grace and have continued to be so up to this time.”

It would seem to me that “Full of Grace” would summerize that full sentence.

Yes, but only to a lesser degree. Stephen, for example is referred also as “filled” with grace or “full of grace” as a translation of “pleres charitos.”

Even if one were to use “full of grace” for our Lady in the English, it does not distinguish her from Stephen. So even if “full of grace” is better than “highly favored” no matter how much one turns it over, it will never capture the full meaning of the Greek.

 

[peregrinus_sg]

Hi everyone,

Gabriel said to Mary in her Aramaic tongue something very close to this:

“Shlem lekh, malyath taibootha”

This means:

“Peace to you, full of grace”

God bless,

Rony

But the New Testament was written in Greek. So we should do our translation from the Greek.

 

[Douglas_Kraeger]

I would like to add my two cents as a fist time try. Is it possible the translators took into account the implications of God’s word to the serpent in Gen.3:15; “I will put enmity between you and the Woman and between your offspring and Hers” ? Do any protestants (or liberal catholics) deny this must be speaking of Mary, the Mother of Jesus? Since Jesus was “like us in all ways but sin” and that must have been the enmity between “her offspring and the devil’s”, this is why we say she was sinless, because GOD eternally favors her in the present tense with " I will put enmity between…" I say eternally in the present tense because I like to point out that God has only one infinite thought and it is always in the present tense because there can be no past or future in the thought of God because then His thought would be changing and He would not be the God outside of time and space which He created? Then, since Mary has eternal enmity from sin, (sins of comission and omission) by GOD’S GRACE, there is never a loss of Grace, only a continual increase as She always does all God allows her to see that She should, each moment of Her life. Hense, full of grace.

 

[ronyodish]

But the New Testament was written in Greek. So we should do our translation from the Greek.

There are two issues here:

1. What language did Gabriel use to talk to Our Lady? For this, you can not ignore the Aramaic, because this is the day to day language that was used by Mary.
2. What language was used in writing Luke under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? I have no problem with Greek primacy of Luke, or for most of the New Testament for that matter.

But even here, the inspired authors of the New Testament were translating whatever that was being passed orally in Aramaic, or in the case of Matthew, a written Aramaic text. The conversations between Jesus and His Apostles, for example, were first done in Aramaic, and the inspired authors remembering those conversations translated them into Greek.

So, even if the Aramaic Peshitta Bible is a translation back into Aramaic from the Greek translations of the original Aramaic oral conversations (which is likely the case, though Aramaic primacists will disagree) it is still worthy to look at, because it recovers for us as best as possible the original Aramaic conversations.

The Syriac/Aramaic speaking Churches (those in full communion with Rome and those who are not) use the Aramaic Peshitta Bible as our standard Bible. Our Churches bear the living Aramaic tradition of our forefathers who were evangelized by the Apostles and Apostolic men in our Aramaic language.

For us, to say “Shlem lekh, malyath taibootha” is not something foreign to us that we have to learn in some scholars book! This is our tradition, our prayer, our way of addressing Mary from the beginning of the Great Commission to the East.

Aramaic simply cannot be ignored.

God bless,

Rony

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Hi everyone,

Gabriel said to Mary in her Aramaic tongue something very close to this:

“Shlem lekh, malyath taibootha”

This means:

“Peace to you, full of grace”

God bless,

Rony

Thanks Ronyodish! Your translation seems to be consonant with the DR viewpoint, and not at all the NAB!

 

[ronyodish]

Thanks Ronyodish! Your translation seems to be consonant with the DR viewpoint, and not at all the NAB!

No problem

The Aramaic “malyath taibootha” is similar to the Latin “gratia plena”.

The NAB says “favored one!”, which I don’t think covers the full meaning of the Greek “kecharitomene.” I think it would have been better if they translated it as “fully favored/graced”. But I’m not a Greek scholar

God bless,

Rony

 

[porthos11]

I would like to add my two cents as a fist time try. Is it possible the translators took into account the implications of God’s word to the serpent in Gen.3:15; “I will put enmity between you and the Woman and between your offspring and Hers” ? Do any protestants (or liberal catholics) deny this must be speaking of Mary, the Mother of Jesus? Since Jesus was “like us in all ways but sin” and that must have been the enmity between “her offspring and the devil’s”, this is why we say she was sinless, because GOD eternally favors her in the present tense with " I will put enmity between…" I say eternally in the present tense because I like to point out that God has only one infinite thought and it is always in the present tense because there can be no past or future in the thought of God because then His thought would be changing and He would not be the God outside of time and space which He created? Then, since Mary has eternal enmity from sin, (sins of comission and omission) by GOD’S GRACE, there is never a loss of Grace, only a continual increase as She always does all God allows her to see that She should, each moment of Her life. Hense, full of grace.

You have hit it exactly on the head. That’s why this verse Luke 1:28 is used only as a supporting text, but is never taken by itself to “prove” the Immaculate Conception. It must be used together with Genesis 3:15 and the whole notion of the Ark of the Covenant.

 

[jcrichton]

Angel,

The Syriac(Aramaic) Peshitta Bible is a good source to check whenever you want to get very close to the original day to day Aramaic language spoken by Jesus and the people of His time. Sometimes the text in Syriac is more helpful than, or gives additional insight into, the text in Greek.

There is a copy of the Aramaic Peshitta New Testament online. There are also English translations of the Peshitta which you can see in this site such as Younan, Lamsa, etc. Check out Younan on Luke 1:28.

God bless,

Rony

Hi, Rony!

Thank you so much for the info and the links! (…just downloaded the page to my computer.)

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[Lapell]

Had the Navarre translation not been so expensive, I would probably choose it, especially on the Gospel according to Luke. Their footnotes on "full of grace’ are quite informative. However, it seems to me you have to put much money on it if you want their translation of the whole Bible. One good thing, though: it would be very worth it!

 

[johnbres2]

“Full of Grace” is clearly the best translation for ketcharitomene. What is awkward, however, is that the Douay (and Confraternity) versions go on to say in verse 30, that Mary has found “grace” with God. The RSVCE chnages this, so that it has “Hail, full of grace,” and you have found “favor” with God. This makes the most sense grammatically, as we wouldn’t normally say, "you have found ‘grace’ with God. It does seem that “full of grace” is first, and “have found favor” should be second. I will be interested to see if someone with knowledge can explain this.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

“Full of Grace” is clearly the best translation for ketcharitomene. What is awkward, however, is that the Douay (and Confraternity) versions go on to say in verse 30, that Mary has found “grace” with God. The RSVCE chnages this, so that it has “Hail, full of grace,” and you have found “favor” with God. This makes the most sense grammatically, as we wouldn’t normally say, "you have found ‘grace’ with God. It does seem that “full of grace” is first, and “have found favor” should be second. I will be interested to see if someone with knowledge can explain this.

That is curious. In reading Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints for March 25th (first edition of 1756) Butler makes some very interesting remarks on these words of the Angel and even quotes the Angel Gabriel as having said “Fear not Mary, for thou hast found favor before God.” In quoting these words, he obviously departed from the D/R, and instead went with the KJV. But he did quote from the D/R with “Hail Full of Grace.”

It must’ve seemed the better translation to him too.

 

[Lapell]

Hum! I think older versions of the Jerusalem Bible also used to have “full of grace”…