Astonished at His Teaching (Rapita in Ammirazione)

I don't know about you, but there are times when the Word of God fills me with such awe, that I can't find a way to fully express what it stirs up inside of me… But that doesn't stop me from trying.

So I really love the places where the Bible records the words of the people in reaction to something profound that Christ has spoken. This is what we see here in Marco, Mark 11:18. The English Bible uses the word astonished, saying the people were astonished at His teaching. Other ways of saying this would be amazed, enthusiastic, in admiration, or even spellbound. (I really like that last one.)

 
But after I read this in Italian, it brought me a step closer to being able to express what I often feel in response to God's Word.

In Italian, it says that the people, or the crowd, was rapita in ammirazione.

Rapita, can be translated here as captivated. It literally means kidnapped or taken captive. The words that Christ spoke were so profound that the people were taken captive by it.

But that's not all!

Good Ground, Good Fruit (Buona Terra, Buon Frutto)

As we continue our journey through the Italian New Testament, we have finished the book of Matteo, Matthew; and have already crossed over into Marco, Mark. But before we look into our first scriptures in Marco, let me just mention a previous lesson from Matteo 25. It was about the talents a man gave to his servants and it talked about different forms of the word fruit in Italian: including fruttare, as well as the phrase farli fruttare. (Briefly,  farli fruttare means to yield, or you could say "to make fruitful.")

And here in Marco 4:8 a form of the word fruit is used again, (this time, in both the English and Italian translations this time).

It's the parable of the sower and the seed and therefore speaks of the ground or the earth, la terra.

There are many lessons in this familiar parable, but the basis of it is something Italians tend to be very aware of. Not just that you have to sow seed to get a harvest, but also that you can't just sow it any old place… At least not if you want to have a good harvest and bring forth much fruit.

As He Said, Come Aveva Detto

I didn't think of it at the time, but the basis for this topic really came some years back, on a day I was texting with a friend.

It was just after 6 pm on New Year's Eve of 2013. And I was thinking that in Italy (6 hours ahead of my time zone), they had already crossed over into 2014. And since I tend to get a little excited over things like this, I decided to share it with someone. So I sent the following text to my friend:

And her reply was, (how nice of her to play along)…

Hm, I said to myself. Ditto? Italian? I'd never thought about it, but it did seem like a word that came from this language. So I did some research and found that ditto does indeed have Italian roots. It meant something like, having been said. Today in Italian it's represented by the word, detto. And we see it used here in Matthew 28:6 in the phrase, come aveva detto.

Traded (A Farli Fruttare)

One of le parabole, the parables, in  Matthew 25 tells the story of a man who gave talents to his servants before going away on a trip.

This man gave five talents to one servant, two to another, and a single talent to a third. He gave each according to their ability. And once he was gone, the servants who received the five and the two talents went to work.

Now when the Bible talks about what the servant with the five talents did, the English version says he went and traded with them.

But the Italian from the Nuova Riveduta translation, uses the phrase a farli fruttare. Even if you don't fully understand this you can recognize  fruttare as a word similar to our English word fruit. The entire phrase literally means to make them yield, as a plant would yield fruit.