O interpretare istorico-critică a ungerii Mântuitorului din Betania (Ioan 12, 1-8)
A historical-critical interpretation of the Savior’s anointment at Bethany (John 12: 1-8)

Summary/Abstract: The pericope of the anointment of Bethany in John’s account raises some question marks in the world of specialists with respect to the historicity of the scene and of the characters, on one hand, the integrity of the text being another source of debates, on the other hand. Instead, the variations of the manuscripts are minor, affecting at a minimal level the theological flow and the stream of ideas of the pericope. In order to clarify the source text, it was necessary to resort to the methodology of editorial and literary criticism, carried out by means of the most modern biblical instruments, in order to put forward a textual reconstruction as close to the original as possible. Therefore, the verbs (ho tethnekōs / echōn), the nouns (Ioudas ho Iskariōtes / Ioudas Simōnos Iskariōtes) and the problematic conjunctions (kaí / ína) were analysed in detail according to the requirements of a critical-textual approach. After finishing this technical endeavour, we initiated the process of translating the reconstructed text into Romanian, bearing in mind both the philological and the theological dimension, in an attempt to offer as accurate a translation as possible, in view of a future exegetical and theological study on the anointment of Bethany. For this purpose, we analysed the first Romanian biblical translations of the 17th century and the modern translations, including the Synodal, Anania, Bădiliţă and SBIR (Romanian Interconfessional Biblical Society) editions, mark- ing in bold in the source text slight translation deficiencies. In conclusion, we present our version of translation of the text in John 12:1-8, encouraging specialists to provide an assessment on the validity of our endeavour.

• Details
• Contents