Medieval English translations of Greek and Semitic words from the Gospel of John

Abstract

Greek and Semitic words in the Latin text of the gospel of john express specific biblical terms that had been virtually unknown to most of the English population prior to the evangelization that took place in the seventh century. The aim of this paper was to research the ways in which they were translated into Old and Middle English, and discover the reasons for such a translation where possible. Using the comparative method, we attempted to examine the impact of the word origin on its form and meaning, and to reveal cognitive differences in perception of biblical concepts that occurred in the period between the source and the first target text, as well as between the two target texts.

Keywords

• translation
• Latin Old English Middle English Greek Aramaic Hebrew
• simple and complex words
• loan-words
• semantic change