the literary pup

I just finished reading the beautiful "Fitting Service" (Cw2011Jan28) for the third time. This time I picked up on the echo in Bp Zauner's comment "... tria millia hominum ..." translated very reasonably into English from the context as "... three thousand people...".

One of the most dramatic Latin phrases in the Vulgate account of Jesus' encounter w/Pontius Pilatus is "Ecce homo" translated into English as best as is possible "Behold the man".

In this time of concern of the translation of Latin into English appropriately, would that the lessons of the differences in the two above phrases and their translation were more widely appreciated. And their implications also. We will never know why Jerome did not write "Ecce vir". Perhaps someone with the Greek original in front of them might comment. Jerome might say to us what he has PP saying in re the inscription on the cross "Quod scriptsi, scriptsi." (What I have written, I have written.)