…venit hora et nunc est… Jn. v, 25
This week’s entry, from exercises in Ecclesiastical Latin in John F. Collins’ A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, is from John 5:25. It comes in the middle of a segment where Jesus is proclaiming his authority as coming from the Father. Here is the segment of the verse again from the Latin Vulgate which I read and translated, with my translation of it, and then of the entire verse in English (ESV), followed by some grammar points:
Latin:
…venit hora et nunc est…
English (my translation):
…an hour comes and now is…
English (ESV):
Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.
Vocab:
hora = hour
et = and
nunc = now
Grammar:
This week and last week, I studied 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th conjugation verbs. Basically, you memorize a verb’s principal parts (there are four), and to conjugate the verb, you take the “-re” off of the second principal part to give you the present tense verb stem.
For instance, the verb in this verse – “venit” – comes from “venire,” meaning “to come” (advent, venue, venture, etc.), and its four principal parts are: venio, venire, veni, ventus. You would take off the “-re” from the second principal part “venire” to give you the present tense verb stem: “veni-“. There are some vowel changes from short to long, but I won’t mention those right now.
Next, you have to add personal endings to the present tense verb stem to indicate the person and number of persons doing the action:
first-person singular = -o
second-person singular = -s
third-person singular = -t
first-person plural = -mus
second-person plural = -tis
third-person plural = -nt
This verb has a “-t” ending, so it is third-person singular: he/she/it comes
Last week I also studied the irregular verb for “to be” – “sum,” and this week’s verse has a form of this in it; its four principal parts are: sum, esse, fui, futurus. Since this one is irregular, it doesn’t exactly work like the regular verbs mentioned above, so it’s best just to memorize the six forms of the present tense:
first-person singular = sum
second-person singular = es
third-person singular = est
first-person plural = sumus
second-person plural = estis
third-person plural = sunt
The form in this week’s verse is “est,” which is also third-person singular: he/she/it is.
Now we can see the meaning, literally: “it comes, the hour, and now it is;” or more fluidly: “the hour comes (or, is coming), and now is.”
That’s all for this verse, so until next time - Linguas Scripturae Amate!
