Making sense of the prepositions

Your Tatler took the day off from blogging today, but as recompense (over?), is posting a piece from the New Liturgical Movement on a subject that some might say is more than a little esoteric (therefore, right up Bickerstaff’s alley). Titled The Power of Prepositions. It is written by the distinguished scholar Michael P. Foley,

Esoteric though it may seem, the piece is a fascinating exegesis on the difficulties of translating from the Latin into the vernacular those pesky little prepositions.

An excerpt:

De and Ex

The verse concerning the Incarnation has two prepositions denoting the relationship between Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. The original Greek is:

σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα,

And the Latin translation is:

Et incarnátus est de Spíritu Sancto ex María Vírgine: et homo factus est.

Which I translate as:

And He was incarnated by the Holy Ghost from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

Highly readable, Bickerstaff urges you to read it all.