[gwd]

I've been learning Biblical Greek, and that was my impression too: The particles he list don't sound at all like the random "uh" and "ah" that he's translating them into.

That said, I do think there's a point that a lot of things end up getting translated in the wrong "register" and lose some of the meaning. One message John the Baptist sends to Jesus is rendered in my translation, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect another?" But in the Greek there's no "should", and the whole sentence is a lot shorter. To me it has much more of a "get off your but and do something" implication; more like, "Hey, are you the one, or are we looking for someone else?"

Same in another place, where where Jesus says something my translation renders, "Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you: [About his upcoming death]" The Greek is a bit more colorful: "Take these words of mine and put them into your ears:" Has much more a sense of exasperation.

[baruz]

You probably know this, but ancient Greek does not use auxiliary verbs to the extent that English does, as it uses inflection to encode tense, mode, and aspect information. The prosdokōmen could be interpreted as present indicative (“are we expecting?”), yes, but it could also be subjunctive deliberative, of which Smyth sez:

> 1805. Deliberative Subjunctive.—The deliberative subjunctive (present or aorist) is used in questions when the speaker asks what he is to do or say (negative μή).

> …

> N.—The subjunctive question does not refer to a future fact, but to what is, under the present circumstances, advantageous or proper to do or say.

So “should we expect?” or “are we (supposed) to expect?” are valid interpretations of προσδοκῶμεν.

> "Take these words of mine…"

As a sibling comment mentions, this is interpreted (eg, Zerwick and Grosvenor on gLuke) as an idiom, but from Aramaic (I don’t know enough about Semitic languages to say) akin to “before your very eyes” in English.

[gwd]

The question isn't one of meaning, but of "register": How polite / academic / lofty / frank / rude / direct / challenging / submissive is it?

In English, "Are you the one, or are we expecting someone else?" the second could also be considered a "subjunctive question" which "does not refer to a future fact", but "what is... advantageous or proper to do or say". All I can say is that, in both cases (in English and in Greek), the question seems more challenging to me than "should we expect another". And I think that interpretation makes more sense of the passage. It's not John experiencing doubt about whether Jesus is the Messiah, nor politely inquiring what his status is: It's John saying, "Hey, I'm in jail; I've passed the torch over to you, but you don't seem to be doing anything. Get on with it!" And Jesus says in response, effectively, "I am getting on with it."

And of course "put these words into your ears" is an idiom -- people don't just walk around saying random things like that. The question is, what's the register of the idiom? "Like Hell I will" is an idiom, which has the same basic meaning as "I will certainly not"; but that doesn't make the latter a good translation for the former. "Let my words ring in your ears" is also an idiom, which basically means "Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you", but it's a very different register.

Given the contrast between the context ("While everyone was marveling at all that Jesus did..."), and the message (about his betrayal and death) and the fact that even with the colorful admonition, they didn't understand it, I think "Let these words ring in your ears" would be a closer translation than "Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you".

EDIT: Went back and looked it up (Luke 9:44):

Θέσθε ὑμεῖς εἰς τὰ ὦτα ὑμῶν τοὺς λόγους τούτους

Literally, "Put-you into the ears of you these-here words." Θέσθε (put) already is inflected as second-person plural, so ὑμεῖς (you-all) is grammatically unnecessary; the fact that it's included here means there's special emphasis. He says "τοὺς λόγους τούτους" ("these-here words") rather than, say, "τὰ ῥήματά μου" ("my words"). The whole thing just comes off to me as much more emphatic than "Listen carefully".

[thaumasiotes]

> The Greek is a bit more colorful: "Take these words of mine and put them into your ears:" Has much more a sense of exasperation.

Maybe. Another possibility (in general) is that that's the idiomatic thing to say in the source language, and it only sounds colorful to non-native speakers.

[gwd]

It can be both, can't it? "Get this through your skulls" is an idiom in English, for instance; but it's also colorful and much more emphatic than "Listen carefully to what I'm about to say".

[thaumasiotes]

No, it can't be both. "Get this through your skulls" is not an idiomatic† way to say "listen to this" in English. It's an idiomatic way to say "listen to this, idiots". It isn't possible for an expression to be simultaneously unmarked and marked.

For a different Biblical phrase, Jesus is often reported as greeting people with the expression "peace be upon you". This is not exotic; the reason he's doing that is that it's Aramaic for "hello". (And still "hello" today in the region, but we tend to write down the modern version as "salaam" rather than "peace be upon you".)

† It occurs to me, given your question, that you might be confused over the difference between "idiom" [meaning: a more or less fixed expression whose meaning is opaque] and "idiomatic" [meaning: (of a manner of speaking) ordinary / natural / unlikely to raise eyebrows]

It's sense (1) here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idiomatic ("Pertaining or conforming to [...] the natural mode of expression of a language"), not sense (2).

[gwd]

So I mean, I've only been reading the NT regularly for about 2 years; and in any case the source text itself is 2000 years old, and the quote itself will almost certainly have been a translation from a very different language (Aramaic into Greek). So it's certainly not impossible that those words are just the way you say that in that language.

That said:

- I have learned quite a number of languages at various levels, including French, Turkish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Koine Greek, German, and Japanese. I can have conversations in French and Mandarin, and I'm reading mid-length paragraphs in Koine Greek. So I've been exposed to a fair range of non-English idioms (as in definition 1, "natural mode of expression").

- If there were other examples of this particular idiom in the NT, the study method I use [1] is highly likely to have shown them to me; but I haven't seen other examples of it.

One thing about low-key idioms is that they're short and easy to say; e.g., the idiomatic way to say "quickly" in Mandarin is 马上, which literally means "on a horse". Nobody thinks about horses when they say that; but it's fast enough to go by quickly. When I read the words in Greek out loud, they're not quick -- it's long, and the rhythm of the words slow the phrase down.

Looking at the grammar and the context, in my judgement, I think it very unlikely to be simply be an idiomatic way to say, "Listen carefully"; I go into more detail in a sibling comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43837037

But hey, I could be wrong. :-)

[1] "Guided immersion" https://www.laleolanguage.com

[binary132]

That’s actually pretty funny and interesting.

[titanomachy]

“Ei su o erchómenos, e prosdokómen héteron?”. Yeah, definitely simpler. Mostly because Greek can build up such rich nouns, I think: “erchómenos” sounds more like something a real person would say than “one who was to come”.

[baruz]

“Are you the coming guy” in English sort of lapses into comedy that was absolutely not intended. or was it?