The designations of reactions of fear to the wonderful in the translations of the New Testament

Purpose: This article deals with the most frequent designations of reactions of fear in the original Greek New Testament and in translations into Latin (Vulgata), English (King James Version), Icelandic (Viðeyjarbiblía) and Russian (Russian Synodal Bible) languages. The reactions of fear are caused by supernatural phenomena such as the miracles of Jesus Christ, the angelic appearances and other similar biblical events. Formally, the Greek verb φοβέομαι originates from the Indo-European root *bhegu- ‘to flee, to run away’, but in the translations into Latin, English, Icelandic and Russian languages this semantic is not preserved. Our goal is to identify semantic features of lexemes from the different translations and to reveal their common/distinctive features. Results: The lexemes with the meaning of fear have been studied from the point of view of the inner form and an etymological meaning of words. The obtained results reflect peculiarities of perception of fear and allow to identify common features in different languages (semantics of quivering or trembling). As regarding distinctive features in a lexical semantics, the lexemes from Latin Vulgata have no specific semantic features (only in conformity with semantics of Greek designations of fear), while the English lexemes characterize the speed of occurrence of fear’s reactions as very high. The fear causes a state of depression in Icelandic translation (ótti and ótta) or links to traditional manifestation of fear’s reactions (semantics of trembling in these words skelfa, felmtrun). The Russian lexical units provide information about the speed of occurrence of reaction and it’s nature. A utilization of words with semantics of beating predominates in the Russian translation (пугаться, бояться). Also in the Russian translation, there are words with semantics of freezing, which is detected through the use of etymology (for example, страх and страшиться). As mentioned above, in addition to the more frequency meanings of designations of fear’s reactions, a few words, which are used in the translations, reveal the nature of reactions (a beating, a piercing etc.). In several cases the translators uses the words, which have not a meaning of fear: to marvel,undra, удивляться, víla (ekki) etc. Perhaps in these cases the translators based on other text versions of New Testament. Conclusion: Despite the incomprehension of meanings of Greek words, Greek semantics is described in translations into other languages very correctly. The physical manifestation of reactions of fear is ambivalent: in the meanings of roots there is a linkage which detects with archaic notions about fear as something that makes one shiver (conterreor, to tremble, felmtrun, hræðsla, skelfa) or without movement (страх, страшиться, ótti, ótta). Among other things, a few Indo-European roots (*du̯ei-, *(s)kel-) conserve a semantic link with the sphere of negative, which is a part of the fundamental binary opposition OWN-ALIEN.