The Melkites use whatever the priest likes, I guess. In my parish, there are several different Gospels and Epistles in circulation, according to the preference of the priest and the reader.

I've searched a number of translations including the 1991 and 2010 NAB and haven't located the phrase. Where or in what context was the phrase heard?

It's in a Gospel reading for one of the "Pig Sundays".

You need an original 1970 NAB which is what the Byzantine Seminary Press Gospel Book uses. It is the Gospel for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost. The verse is Matthew 8:34.

"The upshot was that the entire town came out to meet Jesus. When they caught sight of him, they begged him to leave their neighborhood."

What were they thinking? The translators, I mean, not the townspeople. I mean, a whole herd of pigs, gone, just like that! You'd ask Him to leave, too. Perfectly understandable. But, "The upshot was. . . ?" What kind of illiterates were they hiring back in 1970?

They thought "And behold the entire town came out to meet Jesus" to archaic? Comparing translations it seems that the 70 NAB was a deliberate move to dumb down the language, clumsily so, as in the above example. The Revised NAB actually returns to the traditional translations of the Confraternity Version in many instances.

Yes; and thanks for giving the passage. And here I thought this was a recent innovation but, checking my 1971 hard-copy NAB, there it is.

What's sad is to realize that here the translators were up against the daunting Greek of (Matthew 8:34) καὶ (kai: and) ἰδοὺ (idou: see, behold, lo; an interjection). Now how would they handle this difficult phrase? Avoiding the obvious, complicating the simple, obscuring the plain meaning and demonstrating, as an old Persian proverb puts it, that "the nightingale is silent and the ass is braying": Surely their kind survives in those who gave us "loves us all" for philanthrōpos.

It's right here:
http://www.stjosaphats.org/from_the-priest.php

I rather much enjoyed this phrase "The swineherds took to their heels." I don't know that "took to their heels" is any less colloquial than "The upshot was"

The translators for the original NAB were following the same mandate as the ones for the ICEL translation of the Roman Missal, namely to avoid literalism and seek instead to render the "inner meaning" of the text, using the best modern idiom possible.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that in many cases the original text allows numerous shades of meaning while only one can be chosen. (Besides the fact that the "best modern idiom" is constantly changing and quickly sounds "dated.")


Peace,
Deacon Richard

My back of the envelope effort at a better translation using (relatively) modern English:

At that time, as Jesus approached the borders of Gadara, he encountered two men [in a graveyard] coming out of the tombs. They were so savage that no one could travel along that road. With a shriek they cried out, "Why do you meddle with us, O Son of God? Have you come to torture us before the appointed time?" A herd of swine was feeding in the distance. The demons kept appealing to Jesus, "If you expel us, then send us into that herd of swine". Jesus answered, "Out with you". And the demons came forth and entered into the swine. And the whole herd rushed down to the bluff, and into the sea, and were drowned.

The swineherds fled, and arriving in town related everything that happened, including the story of the two possessed men. And lo!, The whole town came forth to meet Jesus, and catching sight of him, they begged him to leave their land.

I suspect this was based on the mistaken belief that, because the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, the closest modern equivalent would be the colloquial English of USA Today (i.e., nothing should be written at more than a 7th grade level). In fact, koine is not dumbed down Greek, and the New Testament uses a very sophisticated vocabulary (particularly John and the Pauline Epistles), and in no way can be considered a "simple" text.

What I have always wondered about this passage is who owned those swine? It would have been a violation of Jewish law to eat pork so I presume neither the swine's owners nor the keepers were Jewish. Just wondering?

I believe at that point, Jesus was on the other side of the lake int he land of the Gentiles.

But I don't have a Bible on hand to check.