He gave sight to the physically and spiritually blind (image)

“In the religious cultures of Asia, it is often believed that people are blind because of their past karma. The blind often resort to begging in order to survive. Here the blind man stretches out his arms in a polite way to receive a donation but instead he connects with a healing touch. The onlookers are shocked to see Jesus making physical connection with a lowly beggar with bad karma.”

Drawing by Sawai Chinnawong who employs northern and central Thailand’s popular distinctive artistic style originally used to depict Buddhist moral principles and other religious themes; explanation by Paul DeNeui. From That Man Who Came to Save Us by Sawai Chinnawong and Paul H. DeNeui, William Carey Library, 2010.

For more images by Sawai Chinnatong in TIPs see here.

complete verse (Mark 8:24)

Following are a number of back-translations of Mark 8:24:

  • Uma: “The blind person looked-around and said: ‘I see people, shadowy like trees walking here and there.'” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “The man looked-up and he said, ‘I see people walking, but they are in appearance like trees.'” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And that blind person looked around, and he said, ‘I can see the people which look like trees which are walking.'” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “The blind-one looked-up and he said, ‘There is. I can-see people. Their appearance is like trees, but they are walking.'” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “That blind person looked around and said, ‘Yes, I can now see people who are walking, but they are still like trees.'” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)

Translation commentary on Mark 8:24

Exegesis:

anablepsas (cf. 6.41) ‘looking up’ or, ‘recovering sight’: either of these meanings is possible. The former is favored by Thayer, Abbott-Smith, Arndt & Gingrich; American Standard Version, Revised Standard Version, Goodspeed, The Modern Speech New Testament, Williams, Zürcher Bibel, Taylor; the latter is preferred by Moffatt, Manson, Translator’s New Testament, Lagrange, O Novo Testamento de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo. Revisdo Autorizada.

blepō tous anthrōpous hoti hōs dendra horō peripatountas literally ‘I see men, for I see (them) walking around like trees.’ As the Greek text stands the statement is none too logical: clearly the meaning of the blind man’s answer is, ‘I see men, because even though the things I perceive look like trees, they are walking around,’ i.e. the fact that they were in motion told him they were men, not trees. The meaning will be more clearly brought out by a free paraphrase than by a word-for-word translation. Cf. Manson (and Williams) ‘I see men: they look to me like trees walking about’; Lagrange Je vois les hommes, car j’aperçois comme des arbres qui marchent. Black conjectures that the underlying Aramaic emphatic form of statement meant ‘I see men like trees walking,’ and the Vulgate and Syriac versions translate a text identical with this, ‘I see men like trees that are walking’ (omitting the hoti ‘because’ and horō ‘I perceive’ of the critical Greek text).

dendron (only here in Mark) ‘tree.’

peripateō (cf. 2.9) ‘walk,’ ‘walk about.’

Translation:

Looked up must not be taken in the sense of ‘looking up to heaven’ or ‘looking up at the sky.’ Either the man’s head was lowered and he looked up, or as is equally possible the Greek verb may mean ‘regained his sight’ (see above). ‘Looking up’ should not be, however, any higher than horizontal (in some translations the misunderstanding which follows, in which men are said to look like trees, has been attributed by the readers to the fact that the man looked up toward the sky, and, of course, all he could see would be trees).

Unless one is quite careful the difficult reply of the man is made more complicated by an awkward grammatical arrangement. For example, a number of renderings have meant ‘I see men walking like trees.’ Of course, trees do not walk, and the meaning of the passage is completely lost. Renderings which have attempted to convey the meaning of the original while remaining as close to the Greek as the receptor languages in question will allow, include ‘see men that are walking, they are like trees’ (Tzeltal), ‘see men like trees, they are walking’ (Copainalá Zoque), ‘I see men like they are trees; I see them as they are walking’ (Chicahuaxtla Triqui).

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1961. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .