This paper analyzes the system of Korean honorific verb endings in four broadly accepted Bible versions, namely the New Korean Revised Version (1998), the Revised New Korean Standard Version (2004), Common Translation Revised Version (1999), and Seonggyeong (2005). Especially it focuses on the honorific verb endings phenomena of the Gospel of Mark in the existing Korean translations, and propose the proper Korean verb endings. Among the Synoptic Gospels, the focus was placed on the Gospel of Mark as this book with less metaphors is more suitable for analyzing various honorific verb endings in Korean translations. Each translation was compared and classified, and then the honorific verb endings was broadly divided into discourses concerning Jesus and discourses between people other than Jesus for consideration.
Since the Gospel of Mark is centered around events that occurred during the public life of Jesus, large proportion of its text is taken up by Jesus’ utterance. The utterance types related to Jesus takes place mostly between ‘Jesus and the disciples’, ‘Jesus and the sick’, ‘Jesus and the crowd’, and ‘Jesus and the religious leaders’. Besides these, there are special instances like the utterance between ‘Jesus and the high priest’ and ‘Jesus and the Pilate’. Existing Korean Bible highlights Jesus as Messiah by using a formal form of honorifics. In general, Jesus uses directive expression of ‘haera’ to everyone while other people use respectful expression of ‘hasipsio’ to Jesus.
But it should be sublated to keep adhering excessively to principle of formality and to use it uniformly. First of all, the directive expression of ‘haera’ and the respectful expression of ‘hasipsio’ are suitable for what are to be a supposedly strict relationship between Jesus and His disciples. Then, Jesus took deep compassion and bestowed mercy on the sick he encountered. In that sense, a kind of welcoming expression of ‘hao-hasipsio’ or a little bit more welcoming expression of ‘haeyo-hasipsio’ would be better than directive expression ‘haera-hasipsio’ for dialogues with the sick who suffer from physical diseases. As for the crowd, the expression of ‘hasipsio-hasipsio’ will be better or suitable. Instead of the directive expression ‘haera’, the ‘hasipsio’ expression reveals the more personal side of Jesus so the latter expression will be more appropriate to covey God’s Word to the crowd.
Instead of consistent application of the formality principle, the honorific verb endings need to be applied, in special circumstances, according to the scale of politeness of the discourse or pragmatics. For instance, the honorific verb endings need to be applied differently according to the situations Jesus is in as in the court hearing with the high priest before the Sanhedrin, when being questioned by the Pilate, and when people mock, curse and even beat him when he is arrested, tortured and crucified on the cross. In addition, I have presented the need to apply diverse levels of ness in consideration of the circumstances such as the speaker-listener relationship, the third person, etc and various sociocultural factors. In case of discourses among people that do not involve Jesus, the directive ‘haera’ - the respectful ‘hasipsio’ may be appropriate form of politeness in hierarchical/vertical relationships such as ‘king-subject’, ‘master-servant’, and ‘father-son’ etc.