Abstract
This article is the first in a three-part survey of the various vocative forms used in direct discourse in the Gospels, and the similarities and differences among the forms used. Some of the problems associated with finding terms appropriate to each context in English and other languages are raised, and attention is drawn to the complexity of the issues.
Keywords
Introduction
This is a discussion that will inevitably raise more questions than can easily be answered even for translation into English. But these are questions that translators into other languages also need to consider, and at least in my experience, seldom do. 1 I do not expect that any reader, whether or not they are first-language users of English, will agree with all my suggestions or speculations. I am of course writing from within the limitations of my own dialectal, sociolectal, and generational usage of English, and the goal is to provoke more careful thought about vocatives than usually occurs, rather than to provide firm answers.
The data have been collected visually from the diglot Synopsis of the Four Gospels published by UBS in 1972. Its English text is that of the 1946 edition of RSV and the Greek text is that of the 1964 edition published by the Württembergische Bibelanstalt Stuttgart, so the examples may not all correspond exactly with the texts of more recent English versions or Greek editions. However, it seems unlikely that any minor differences will affect the broad outcome of the discussion. The renderings of a random selection of English versions (all within easy reach of my desk!) are referred to besides that of RSV, namely KJV, Phps, NEB, GNB, NJB, NIV, and NLT. The versions KJV, RSV, Phps, and NEB are in parallel columns in The New Testament in Four Versions (published by The Iversen Associates, New York, 1967) and are therefore easy to access together.
My interest in the subject was sparked by the casual observation over many years that different dialects of English do not use vocatives of direct address in exactly the same way, and by the more recent realization that some vocative terms are being used today (at least in England) in ways noticeably different from their usage a few decades ago. To give examples, I had noticed not later than the 1970s that Australian speakers were more likely than British speakers to put their addressee’s personal name into a sentence as a vocative, and that American speakers tended to use “sir” as a form of address more often than British speakers. 2 One of my daughters assures me from her present-day interactions with Australian and American colleagues that these observations still hold good. 3 As for current terms of address (at least in the south of England), the use of “mate” seems to have increased markedly in recent years. 4 When I was in my teens and twenties, or even my forties and fifties, I would never have dreamed of addressing an octogenarian male stranger as “mate,” but now as an octogenarian male myself, I find I am not infrequently addressed in this way by much younger strangers, including for instance not only tradesmen, but also a homeless beggar I talk with from time to time. I cannot recall being addressed in this way by any female speakers (not even my wife!). 5 Other colloquial forms of address in use in Britain include “boss,” “guv” (a shortened form of “governor”), and “chief.” The first would probably be used by an employee to address an employer, the second by a workman to address a customer, and the third in a military or police context, though these are not absolute categories and may vary from region to region.
All these casual observations led me to think about the terms people used in the Gospels to address each other, and to address God. The position of vocatives within their sentences I dealt with in a TBT paper (Clark 1996), and this present paper will consider only the actual terms used. Quotations from the Old Testament will be omitted from the discussion, which will cover three areas of usage in each Gospel, primarily in narrative contexts. The first is the way Jesus addresses God, the second the way Jesus addresses other people, and the third the way other people address Jesus. There will be occasional reference to how people address each other in parables as well as in narrative. Each Gospel will be reviewed separately, and parallel passages will be compared if they show significant similarities or differences. Throughout the discussion, it must not be forgotten that most of the conversations recorded in the Greek text of the Gospels probably took place originally in Aramaic, and in a few cases perhaps even in Latin, so that usually the text we have is already a translation, and may well reflect the varying familiarity with Greek of the Gospel writers, or their own dialectal or sociolectal usage. With these numerous caveats in mind, let us examine each Gospel in turn, constantly bearing in mind that I am working within the unconscious or subconscious limits imposed by my own experience and use of English.
The Gospel of Mark
Mark is not only the shortest Gospel, and probably the earliest, but it also has the fewest examples of vocative terms.
How Jesus addresses God
There is only one such example in Mark, at 14.36, in Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. It seems reasonable to assume that the prayer was made in Aramaic, and that Mark, who may have heard the prayer himself if he was the young man mentioned in 14.51-52, vividly recalled the intimate Aramaic form Abba, the vocative in Aramaic adding the enclitic definite article to the noun ’ab. For the benefit of his Greek readers, Mark adds the Greek ho patēr, translating the Aramaic article. (Compare to korasion—literally, “the little girl”—in 5.41 as the translation of talitha.) Jesus had been brought up in Galilee, a mixed Jewish and Gentile area, so it is quite likely that he had at least a working knowledge of Greek from childhood. However, it is hard to imagine that in his agonized prayer Jesus himself addressed his Father bilingually, especially using a Greek nominative with a definite article in a syntactically vocative position rather than the purely vocative form pater. How should modern translators handle this vocative that mixes Greek vocabulary with Aramaic syntax? Many versions simply copy the Greek repetition, giving readers the impression that Jesus used both languages. Would it be more helpful to put “Father” (or perhaps “My Father”) in brackets, and give readers at least a hint that it is very probably the author’s gloss of the Aramaic? Or would this be confusing? Is a footnote called for, or would it be merely a distraction?
How Jesus addresses other people
Mark gives six examples of Jesus addressing others. The first is in 2.5, where he addresses the paralytic man as teknon. This is rendered as “son” or “my son” in several English versions, but is this satisfactory? The word is used of children, and is used for instance by Mary to the twelve-year-old Jesus in Luke 2.48. So is Mark intending to imply that the paralytic was perhaps only a teenager, or maybe even younger? The fact that he was carried by four friends is not incompatible with this, and possibly they were also youngsters. After all, would responsible adults have attempted the vandalism of breaking open the roof of the house? Or am I projecting modern Western teenage lack of inhibitions onto a society where they had no place? An alternative interpretation is that Mark has Jesus use the word teknon to indicate an affectionate, paternal concern for the paralysed man. (It is used in this sort of context by the father of the prodigal to his elder son in the parable in Luke 15.31.) What connotation does the KJV rendering “son” carry to modern readers? Perhaps compassion, but perhaps also an element of condescension? Some other versions such as RSV, Phps, NEB, GNB, and NLT rule out the latter by offering “My son,” but whether this is a suitable model for other languages would have to be carefully weighed up. If it implied that Jesus thought the paralytic was his biological son, it would be seriously misleading.
The only other use of the word teknon as a vocative in Mark is at 10.24, where Jesus addresses his disciples in the plural as tekna. It seems unlikely that he is commenting on their youth, as some of them were probably little younger than Jesus himself, or perhaps even older than him. For example, Matthew had been a leading tax-collector, an improbable role for a very young man. Thus in 10.24, the overtone is more likely to be one of frustrated affection or even exasperation at the disciples’ slowness to grasp spiritual truths, though without access to the intonation or the body language of the speaker, it is impossible to be sure. Not only KJV but also RSV, Phps, NEB, and NIV all render tekna as “Children” and in this way surely imply an overtone of condescension, as does NLT “Dear children.” NJB and GNB offer “My children” and as in 2.5 this pushes the overtone more in the direction of affection than condescension. Perhaps at a more colloquial level, one could consider saying “lads,” “guys,” or “you guys,” though this last would not work well in a sentence-initial position. Whether other languages would find similar solutions appropriate needs to be considered by translators.
The next vocative after Mark 2.5 is in 5.34, where Jesus addresses the woman with the haemorrhage as thugatēr, a syntactic vocative which appears as a nominative form in the Greek, though this time with no definite article, and with a true vocative thugater in some manuscripts. Is the nominative perhaps an indication that this is another conversation translated from Aramaic by Mark? In the parallel text in Luke 8.48, the same scribal variation occurs, with the nominative form in the text and the vocative in some manuscripts. In the parallel passage in Matt 9.22 the situation is reversed, with the “correct” vocative form thugater in the text and the nominative in some manuscripts. Is this fluctuation merely a case of scribal variation, or does it carry sociolinguistic overtones?
Irrespective of the case form, what is implied by Jesus’ use of this word at all? What were the relative ages of Jesus and the woman? He was presumably in his early thirties. The woman was evidently neither premenstrual nor postmenopausal. She had suffered for twelve years and if the problem had started when she began to menstruate, she could well have been only in her mid-twenties and thus a little younger than Jesus. This would seem a plausible hypothesis, and could explain Jesus’ choice of this term of address, which would surely have been out of place if the woman was significantly older than Jesus. In the light of her poignant demonstration of faith in Jesus, thugatēr probably indicates sympathy and compassion, which is explicitly reinforced in the accompanying blessing, “go in peace.” In English, “daughter” is used in many translations, with “my daughter” in NEB, NJB, and GNB. “Daughter” on its own may be somewhat misleading, or at least enigmatic, as one would not normally use this term for an adult female stranger, though the addition of “my” probably excludes any sense of condescension. In some northern English dialects, perhaps “pet” or “luv” would be appropriate, though it would sound uncomfortably colloquial to many. Other somewhat less colloquial expressions might be “young lady” or perhaps even “my dear girl.” I cannot see an ideal solution in English, but translators in other languages need to consider what options are available and sociolinguistically appropriate for their readers.
In 5.41, Mark records Jesus’ words to Jairus’ daughter in Aramaic as Talitha cumi (RSV) and then adds his own translation into Greek, with the Aramaic vocative rendered as to korasion, with the definite article. Since here the syntactic vocative with the article is explicitly stated to be a translation from Aramaic, that surely reinforces the likelihood that ho patēr in 14.36 is also a translation. How is this to be expressed in English? The KJV “Damsel” may have been current usage in 1611, but is completely archaic today. RSV, Phps, NJB, GNB, and NLT all say, “Little girl,” which seems an appropriate address to a twelve-year-old whose name is never stated and may not have been mentioned even to Jesus. The New Testament in Scots by W. L. Lorimer uses the dialectal word “lassock,” though the related form “lassie” would be more widely known. NEB renders as “my child,” which seems a little odd here, and can hardly be recommended as a translation model. In other languages, translators need to consider what vocative term is appropriate to such unusual circumstances.
In Mark 9.25, where Jesus casts out an evil spirit from a young boy, a further example occurs of a vocative with a definite article: to alalon kai kōphon pneuma, literally, “the mute and deaf spirit.” The context does nothing to suggest that the original conversation was not in Aramaic, and the use of the article in the Greek account supports this. A different kind of question arises with the rendering of this vocative into English. KJV and RSV retain the Greek word order with “dumb and deaf spirit,” but more modern versions, such as Phps, NEB, NJB, and GNB, change to the normal word order in English for this phrase, “deaf and dumb spirit.” NLT expands to “Spirit of deafness and muteness” which sounds rather ponderous in English, but may be a useful model in some other languages. Translators in any language have freedom in such situations to use their natural word order or natural expressions, provided this does not distort the original meaning.
The last vocative from Jesus to other people in Mark occurs in 8.33, and is completely different in its connotations from all the others. When Peter rebukes Jesus for speaking of his forthcoming death, Jesus addresses Peter as Satana, a very strong rejection. English versions seem to be united in retaining the word “Satan,” and it is hard to imagine any alternative. In languages where the word is unfamiliar, an explanatory footnote and/or a cross-reference to Matt 4.10 may be helpful.
How other people address Jesus
Mark records eighteen instances of people addressing Jesus with a vocative. Nine different forms are used, one occurring three times and another eight times. This last (didaskale) is probably the nearest to a neutral or unmarked form, in three cases (9.38; 10.35; 13.1) being used by one or more of the disciples to Jesus. Several English versions (KJV, Phps, NEB, NJB) translate as “Master,” whereas others (RSV, NIV, GNB, NLT) prefer “Teacher,” which seems more appropriate to the egalitarian attitudes in most of today’s English-speaking world. In 10.17, 20 an unnamed man addresses Jesus with the same term, adding the adjective agathe “good” in the first instance. There is no suggestion that this inquirer was being devious or insincere, and the same pattern of translation appears in the English versions mentioned above. Some term like “teacher” that is respectful but not obsequious can probably be found in many other languages (such as Thai), though there may be situations in which the nearest equivalent term could suggest a teacher of a religion other than Judaism or Christianity, and would therefore be better avoided.
The trickier occurrences of didaskale are found in 12.14, 19, and 32. In these contexts, Jesus is addressed by the Pharisees, Sadducees, and a scribe, respectively. In the light of the way the conversation with the scribe develops, and Jesus’ words of encouragement to him in 12.34, his sincerity in using this term is not in doubt. But can the same be said of the Pharisees or Sadducees? Both groups are acting as pawns of the religious establishment and trying to trap Jesus (12.13, 18), so their integrity in using the term didaskale is open to suspicion. Given this context, it is hard to avoid the impression that their use of a polite form of address carried a note of sarcasm or at least irony, though again, with no access to intonation or body language it is impossible to be certain. However, this impression is reinforced by Jesus’ relatively confrontational responses to their questions. The English versions cited above all continue to use “master” or “teacher” as before. Is there any practical alternative? The only terms I can think of, such as “clever clogs,” “smart Alec,” or “Mr. Know-all” would be used only to a precocious child, and in any case may well be dialectally or sociolectally restricted even in British English. In terms carrying the general meaning of “teacher” in other languages, there may be a distinction between the sincere and the sarcastic. Perhaps “expert” or even “professor” may sometimes fulfil such a role in English, though “professor” would certainly be anachronistic in a biblical context. Here is another question for translators to ponder before they mechanically retain the term they had used elsewhere.
The other vocative term that occurs more than once is rabbi, an Aramaic word well enough known for Mark to retain it in his Greek text. It is used twice by Peter to address Jesus (9.5 and 11.21) and once by Judas Iscariot (14.45). The retention of the Aramaic term in the records of Peter’s address to Jesus may give a subtle touch of authenticity to the tradition that Peter was indeed a primary source for Mark. Some English versions (such as NEB, NJB, NIV) keep the Aramaic word, while others (such as GNB, NLT) translate it as “teacher,” and others use “master” (KJV, RSV, Phps). If rabbi will be understood by potential readers, then translators in other languages may well choose to keep it, perhaps with an explanatory footnote. The use of rabbi by Judas in 14.45 surely carries an overt element of hypocrisy, but this is conveyed more by the general context of the betrayal than by the use of this one word. It is probably best to use the same term here as was used in the other two occurrences.
It remains to note the use of the related form rabbouni by blind Bartimaeus in 10.51. In this context, the addition of the possessive suffix “my” to the noun rabbi presumably indicates something of the mixture of desperation, trust, and hope that gripped Bartimaeus at the crucial moment of his personal encounter with Jesus. A few verses earlier in 10.47 he had addressed Jesus by name, and had also identified him as the Son of David, the only person in this Gospel to do so, a poignant case of the blind leading the sighted. English versions vary in their rendering of rabbouni. NJB keeps the Aramaic term with a footnote, but NIV shortens it to “Rabbi” with no explanation. RSV, Phps, and NEB have “Master,” and GNB and NLT have “Teacher.” (KJV has “Lord,” but this is based on a variant Greek text.) If translators have retained rabbi elsewhere, it would probably be best to keep rabbouni here, with another footnote to explain its heightened emotional impact.
The most frequent term of address to Jesus in the Gospels as a whole is kurie, a word with a polite meaning ranging from “sir” to “Lord.” It is still in common use in the first sense in modern conversational Greek, for instance, by a waiter addressing a guest in a restaurant. It is rather surprising that there is only one occurrence of this term in Mark, at 7.28, where a Gentile woman speaks to Jesus, asking him to cast a demon out of her daughter. It is in response to Jesus’ rather non-committal reply that she calls him kurie, which may be an indication that the original conversation in this case was in Greek, which is quite likely as the woman was a Gentile. Some versions translate this as “Lord” (KJV, RSV, Phps, NIV, NLT) and others as “sir” (NEB, GNB, NJB). The woman certainly shows a remarkable degree of faith in Jesus’ ability to heal, but whether this amounts to the full understanding of his deity that may be implied by “Lord” seems doubtful. Probably “sir” is more appropriate to the context. In other languages an equivalent word used in normal polite address would probably be the safest option. (For an earlier discussion of these four terms of address in TBT, see Soesilo 1996.)
It was noted above that Bartimaeus addressed Jesus by name (10.47), and qualified this by describing him as the Son of David. There are two other instances in Mark of Jesus being addressed by name, and in both cases there is again further qualification. The first instance is in 1.24, where an evil spirit speaks through a possessed man with the vocative Iēsou Nazarēne “Jesus of Nazareth.” In the light of the reservations of at least some Jews about Nazareth (John 1.46), it is possible that this might have a somewhat derogatory overtone, but in view of the way the demon-possessed man immediately goes on to identify Jesus as “the Holy One of God” this seems improbable. A literal translation of the vocative is unlikely to be misleading here. In some languages (though not in English) there may be a standard way of adjusting from a place name to the name of an inhabitant of that place, and in others it may be necessary to say “man of Nazareth” or “person from Nazareth” or something similar.
Another demon-possessed man addresses Jesus in 5.7 as “Jesus, Son of the Most High God” (RSV), and again it seems that something close to a literal translation is appropriate and would not be misleading. It is interesting to see that it is Jesus’ enemies, the evil spirits, who are presented as having a sharper realization of who he truly is than do other people, even his disciples.
The final vocative in Mark is found in 15.18, and is very different from all the others. Here the Roman soldiers who were about to crucify Jesus address him with very overt mockery as basileu tōn Ioudaiōn “king of the Jews.” The contemptuous attitude of the speakers is clear from the context, and there is probably nothing that a choice of vocabulary could do to emphasize it. If a literal translation might cause any doubt about their attitude, it may be necessary to adjust the translation to “so-called king of the Jews” or “self-styled king of the Jews.”
In the next article we shall consider the same three categories of vocative usage in the other two Synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Luke, and in the final article, the usage in the Gospel of John.
Footnotes
1.
I am very grateful to Irene Berman for her meticulous proofreading of earlier drafts of this article, which rescued it from numerous typos and infelicities, and to Norm Mundhenk, Elena Kolyada, and the late Paul Ellingworth for their helpful comments, especially dissentient ones!
2.
Norm Mundhenk informs me that this usage occurs especially in the southern states.
3.
Personal conversation with Rachel Clark on June 24, 2018.
4.
Paul Ellingworth informed me that this is not the case in Scotland, and Norm Mundhenk tells me “that ‘mate’ is the male vocative of preference in Australia” (email of August 1, 2018).
5.
However, since first drafting this paper, I have been surprised to notice on a popular TV quiz programme that the quizmaster frequently addresses female contestants as “mate.”
Abbreviations
GNB Good News Bible with Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha (1976)
KJV King James Version (1611)
NEB New English Bible New Testament (1961)
NIV New International Version (1979)
NJB New Jerusalem Bible (1985)
NLT New Living Translation (1996)
Phps New Testament in Modern English, trans. J. B. Phillips (1958)
RSV Revised Standard Version New Testament (1946)