Greek postpositive δέ and Syriac ܕܝܢ are transitional connectives ('but/and'); the Vulgate renders the adversative force with sentence-initial At, a stylistic word-order shift typical of Latin clause openings.
EN but they, when they saw him walking on the sea, supposed that it was a ghost, and cried out;
ES Y viéndole ellos, que andaba sobre la mar, pensaron que era fantasma, y dieron voces;
ZH-HANS 但门徒看见他在海面上走,以为是鬼怪,就喊叫起来;
ZH-HANT 但門徒看見他在海面上走,以為是鬼怪,就喊叫起來;
Greek postpositive δέ and Syriac ܕܝܢ are transitional connectives ('but/and'); the Vulgate renders the adversative force with sentence-initial At, a stylistic word-order shift typical of Latin clause openings.
Greek uses an aorist participle (ἰδόντες) and Syriac a finite perfect with object suffix (ܚܙܐܘܗܝ, 'they saw him'); the Vulgate restructures with a temporal clause ut viderunt ('when they saw'), a construction-level divergence expressing the same sequence.
The accusative pronoun αὐτόν / eum ('him') is expressed independently in Greek and Latin, but in Syriac it is incorporated as the object suffix on the verb ܚܙܐܘܗܝ, hence no separate token is present.
Greek τῆς θαλάσσης and Latin mare both denote 'the sea', but Syriac reads ܡܝܐ ('the waters'), a lexical substitution favouring the generic term for water rather than the proper geographic 'sea', a recurring Peshitta tendency in the lake narratives.
Greek ἔδοξαν and Latin putaverunt are simple finite verbs of opinion, whereas Syriac employs the idiomatic reflexive construction ܘܣܒܪܘ ܠܗܘܢ ('they supposed to themselves'), the ethical dative being a standard Syriac idiom for verbs of thinking.
The Greek introduces indirect discourse with the conjunction ὅτι ('that'); both Latin (accusative-and-infinitive phantasma esse) and Syriac (a relative-headed nominal clause) express the reported content without a discrete conjunction token.
Greek φάντασμα and Latin phantasma are the same loanword for 'apparition/ghost'; Syriac paraphrases with ܚܙܘܐ ܕܓܠܐ ('a false/deceptive vision'), an interpretive expansion clarifying the illusory nature rather than transliterating the Greek term.
Greek finite ἐστίν and the Syriac copular pronoun ܗܘ both supply the predicative 'is'; the Vulgate uses the infinitive esse within its accusative-and-infinitive construction, a syntactic rather than semantic difference.
All three render 'they cried out' (ἀνέκραξαν / ܘܩܥܘ / exclamaverunt); the Syriac and Greek prefix the coordinating conjunction to the verb, while the punctuation marks (Greek raised dot, Latin and Syriac terminal stops) reflect editorial verse division rather than textual divergence.