Hand colored stencil print on washi by Sadao Watanabe (1979)
Image taken with permission from the SadaoHanga Catalogue where you can find many more images and information about Sadao Watanabe. For other images of Sadao Watanabe artworks in TIPs, see here.
Following is a painting by Chen Yuandu 陳緣督 (1902-1967):
Housed in the Société des Auxiliaires des Missions Collection – Whitworth University.
Image taken from Chinese Christian Posters . For more information on the “Ars Sacra Pekinensis” school of art, see this article , for other artworks of that school in TIPs, see here.
“The low social status of these men is indicated by the fact that they are wearing only one piece of cloth, all that they own. They are men of different ages working out in the fields raising animals. No one usually visits them.”
Orthodox Icons are not drawings or creations of imagination. They are in fact writings of things not of this world. Icons can represent our Lord Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. They can also represent the Holy Trinity, Angels, the Heavenly hosts, and even events. Orthodox icons, unlike Western pictures, change the perspective and form of the image so that it is not naturalistic. This is done so that we can look beyond appearances of the world, and instead look to the spiritual truth of the holy person or event. (Source )
The Greek and Hebrew that is translated as “shepherd” in English is translated in Kouya as Bhlabhlɛɛ ‘yliyɔzʋnyɔ — ” tender of sheep.”
Philip Saunders (p. 231) explains:
“Then one day they tackled the thorny problem of ‘shepherd’. It was problematic because Kouyas don’t have herdsmen who stay with the sheep all the time. Sheep wander freely round the village and its outskirts, and often a young lad will be detailed to drive sheep to another feeding spot. So the usual Kouya expression meant a ‘driver of sheep’, which would miss the idea of a ‘nurturing’ shepherd. ‘A sheep nurturer’ was possible to say, but it was unnatural in most contexts. The group came up with Bhlabhlɛɛ ‘yliyɔzʋnyɔ which meant ‘a tender of sheep’, that is one who keeps an eye on the sheep to make sure they are all right. All, including the translators, agreed that this was a most satisfactory solution.”
In Chuj, the translation is “carer” since there was no single word for “shepherd” (source: Ronald Ross), in Muna, it is dhagano dhumba: “sheep guard” since there was no immediate lexical equivalent (source: René van den Berg), in Mairasi it is translated with “people who took care of domesticated animals” (source: Enggavoter 2004), in Noongar as kookendjeriyang-yakina or “sheep worker” (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang), and Kwakum as “those-who-monitor-the-livestock” (source: Stacey Hare in this post ).
Following are a number of back-translations of Luke 2:8:
Noongar: “In that country, shepherds were working outside in the night, looking after their sheep.” (Source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
Uma: “Outside Betlehem town, there were several shepherds. While they were taking care of their sheep in the fields that night,” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “Na, that night there were caretakers of sheep in that place staying awake to watch their crowds/flocks of sheep in a grassy-place in open-country.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And on that night, nearby that town, there were some people in the pastures because they were pasturing their domestic animals which were sheep.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “During that night, there were people in the pastureland who were guarding their sheep.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “That night, there were some shepherds guarding their sheep there at the feeding area.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
kai poimenes ēsan en tē chōra tē autē ‘and there were shepherds in the same region.’
poimēn ‘shepherd’; according to rabbinic sources shepherds in Israel were despised and considered unreliable, cf. Strack-Billerbeck II, 113f.
chōra ‘district’ (as here), ‘country,’ ‘(cultivated) land’; the phrase en tē chōra tē autē is sometimes translated less emphatically, “in that region” (Revised Standard Version, cf. Williams, An American Translation) instead of ‘in the same region.’
agraulountes kai phulassontes phulakas tēs nuktos ‘staying out in the fields and keeping the night watches,’ appositive to poimenes and describing the activity of the shepherds. The accusative phulakas is the cognate accusative or accusative of content, etymologically related to the preceding main verb phulassontes ‘watching’ and thus specifying its meaning: the shepherds keep watch over their flock by means of phulakai. tēs nuktos is either genitive of time (but then usually without article), going with phulassontes phulakas ‘keeping watches at night,’ or, preferably, qualifying genitive with phulakas: ‘night watches.’
phulakē ‘guarding,’ ‘watch of the night,’ ‘prison.’
Translation:
Shepherds usually can be described as ‘men who tend (or, feed/lead/care-for/watch) the sheep.’ In some cases such a rendering would lead to tautology, because the rest of the sentence comes near to a description of a shepherd’s job; then it is preferable simply to render ‘men.’ For ‘sheep’ see references on 15.4.
Out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. In a context like this some languages (e.g. Javanese, Ekari) render ‘to (keep) watch’ by ‘to stay with’; in others the rendering requires a second verb to express the connexion with the object, e.g. ‘to (keep) watch, staying-with/taking-care-of’ (cf. Balinese). In some cases the language renders the phrase ‘to keep watch at night’ by one verb (Tae’); elsewhere the language possesses one verb to render ‘to be/stay at night,’ ‘to pass the night.’ In the latter case the structure of the sentence may better be slightly changed, cf. ‘they were-passing-the-night in the fields, staying-with their flock’ (Javanese, Batak Toba). — Out in the field, or, ‘in the grass (i.e. open uncultivated areas)’ (Tboli), ‘in (the-)country (i.e. brushland, suitable for grazing), but in (the-)open’ (Kituba, which has to use two expressions in order to make it clear that they were not inside a house). For flock, i.e. a number of domesticated animals tended by a herdsman, some languages have a specific term, e.g. a word related to ‘gathered group’ (Kele), or ‘enclosure,’ by extension also used to indicate the animals normally kept there (Zarma). In other languages “their flock” has to be rendered by, ‘those-they-tend/feed’ (Balinese, Batak Toba), ‘the sheep they had to care for,’ ‘their sheep.’
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.
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