Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 95 No. 2, 2025.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.53745/bs.95.2.15
Is there ’Benefit’ or ’Joy’ in the Translation of hapax legomena in the Epistle to Philemon?
Anđelo Maly
orcid.org/0000-0001-6681-7230
; Catholic Faculty of Theology University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The term hapax legomenon (ἅπαξ λεγόμενον, meaning »said once«) refers to a word or phrase of uncertain meaning that appears only once within a specific literary corpus. In the context of the New Testament, which contains 5,436 distinct lexemes, approximately 1,940 instances of hapax legomena have been identified. These linguistic rarities pose significant challenges for translators and exegetes, particularly when they include proper names or terms with ambiguous semantic ranges. This analysis focuses on the five hapax legomena (ἄχρηστος, ἑκούσιος, ἀποτίνω, προσοφείλω and ὀναίμην) found in the Epistle to Philemon, a concise Pauline letter spanning merely 25 verses and 335 words, to demonstrate the complexities of rendering these unique terms into modern languages.
Keywords
New Testament; hapax legomenon; translation; semantic analysis; Greek language; exegesis; Epistle to Philemon
Hrčak ID:
335032
URI
Publication date:
5.9.2025.
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