“Crying, ‘in the wilderness,’” or “Crying in the wilderness?”

On my last blog, I did a short study on Mark’s view of Christ according to his prologue. Soon, I hope to incorporate that article on this blog and maybe take it a little more in-depth, but when I translated Mark 1:3 I strayed from the traditional rendering. In this entry, I am going to look at why I did so.

In the original Greek and Hebrew there is no punctuation. This means that as we attempt to translate them for English audiences, we must supply the punctuation where necessary according to the grammar. This is to some degree a guessing game, but the work of scholars and linguists have greatly helped. In Mark 1:3, the question revolves around the placement of some quotation marks. Here is how most translations have opted to translate it:

“a voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘prepare the way of the Lord…’”

And here is the greek of the NA27 text:

φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ· ἑτοιμάσατε τὴν ὁδὸν κυρίου,

All of the punctuation has been added by the editors of the NA27. If you look closely, you will see a raised dot after the word ἐρήμῳ (erēmō, wilderness). This punctuation stands for a colon (:) and is setting off the quote from the preceding text. Placing the punctuation here, the editors are saying that the phrase “in the wilderness” should be qualifying the participle “crying out.” So the “voice” is “crying out,” and it is doing so “in the wilderness.” The text following the raised dot is the content of the the crying out, that is, what the voice is saying: “Prepare the way of the Lord…”

As I mentioned earlier, I translate this verse a little differently. Instead of having “in the wilderness” qualifying “crying out,” I translate it like this:

“A voice crying out, “in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord…”

Taken this way, the voice is telling us to prepare the way of the Lord, with the way being “in the wilderness.” But why do I say this?

The verse in Mark is a quotation from the book of Isaiah (40:3) and is identical to the Septuagint (minus the newly added punctuation), which is the greek translation of the Old Testament, widely used in the first century AD. When we compare the verse to its Hebrew counterpart, we see roughly the same idea. However, the Hebrew text that we have and mostly use also has added accents and vowels. These were added by a group known as the Masoretes, and were also not in the original. They were, however, very thorough, and added them in an attempt to preserve the original reading during a flurry of language change and evolution. They are not inspired, but we have reason to trust the additions (there is, with all things, a debate here however). Here are the Septuagint and Hebrew renderings:

φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ ἑτοιμάσατε τὴν ὁδὸν κυρίου - Isaiah 40:3, LXX
‏ק֣וֹל ק‏ווֹרֵ֔א בַּמִּדְבָּ֕ר פַּנּ֖וּ דֶּ֣רֶךְ יְהוָ֑ה - Isaiah 40:3, BHS

Don’t let the funny looking languages scare you. What I want too look at is a particular accent in the Hebrew text. Notice above the word ק‏ווֹרֵ֔א(qore’) there is a mark above the second middle letter? That accent is called the “zaqef qatan,” and it is used (along with several other accents) to divide the verse into specific thoughts. Above the third letter of the next word, בַּמִּדְבָּ֕ר (bamidbar), is another accent called the “zaqef gadol,” setting it apart from the first clause. The word in question is “in the wilderness” (bamidbar). The accents, taken together, are saying that the phrase “bamidbar” is the first word of the second thought, so when we divide up the phrase here we have two thoughts: “a voice crying” and “in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” The accent here serves to divide the quote (”In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord”) from the introductory clause (”A voice crying”).

So, what this means is that if we follow the masoretic accents here, we will get the translation:

“A voice crying out, “in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord…’”

Because Mark was quoting this verse, it is safe to assume that he intended it to be understood in the same thought pattern as the original. In fact, if you look at the English translations of Isaiah 40:3, you will notice that this is how it is translated, yet Mark 1:3 is generally translated as above.

It seems best to me to translate it as we do in Isaiah 40:3. Does anyone have any other thoughts? Am I missing something? Any insights on why translators have chosen to go this way?

[Edited to actually make the argument for my decision. It was a late night. Friends don't let friends blog after late night homework.]