Study Guide: Group 12

Here is the latest Study Guide! I have not provided English translations, since those are easy enough to find by consulting versions of the Bible in English. Instead, I have tried to call attention to the various grammatical features of the verses, along with interesting vocabulary items, the importance of a specific Biblical context, etc.

You will find more Study Guides at the Vulgate Verses wiki.

These verses contain first, second and third declension nouns:

131. The verb is implied: Auxilium nostrum (est) in nomine Domini.

132. The preposition phrase in sanguine is used here as the predicate. The Latin word anima is being used here to render what is called "psyche" in the Greek Septuagint; the word in Hebrew is "nephesh," meaning "breath, the breath of life." For more about Latin anima, see this blog post.

133. This is an existential use of the verb est, which you can translate as "there is" in English, or, as here, non est, "there is no...," timor non est, "there is no fear."

134. See the note about prope for Verse #68

135. This verse is from the apocryphal book of Wisdom. This is an existential use of the verb est, which you can translate as "there is" in English.

136. The English phrase "nothing new under the sun" made it into Hirsch's New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy.

137. The Latin word os (oris) is related to the Latin verb orare, meaning "to ask for, beg, pray." Knowing the Latin words os, meaning "mouth," and auris, meaning "ear," can help you keep track of the unfortunate English homonyms "oral" and "aural."

138. This famous verse is full of tricky double-negatives. Latin non...sine, "not without," equals a positive: "the prophet has honor." Then add on another negative: nisi, "but not in his own home." The general rhetorical term for making positive declarations by means of negative statements is called litotes.

139. The adjective dignus takes an ablative complement: mercede sua.

140. The verbs are implied here: Esca (est) ventri et venter (est) escis. This is a parallel construction, although note that the first portion has a singular dative, ventri, while the second portion has a plural dative escis (it is this parallelism that helps you be sure that escis is a dative plural here, not ablative).

141. The Latin word saeculum is here rendering the Greek word "aion" (English "eon"), which was adopted as the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew word "olam." Each of these words is complex and fascinating in its own right, and the history of translating the verses of the Bible in which these words appear is quite intriquing.

142. The Latin word secundum can be tricky! Here you have the preposition, secundum, meaning "according to, following." There is also an adjective, secundus, which means "second, next, favorable." The same root, sec-, "follow," can be seen in this wide range of meanings, but you definitely need to be sure when you are dealing with the preposition, which takes an accusative, as here (secundum hominem, as opposed to the adjective.

143. The verb is implied here: Per hominem (est) mors et per hominem (est) resurrectio mortuorum, positing a parallel between Adam and Jesus.