Translation & Commentary

Since its conception, the Apostolic Writings (better known now as the New Testament) were themselves translations. As the Apostles called to memory the words of their master and teacher, Yehoshua of Nazareth, they wrote in Greek the words which he had originally said to them in Aramaic. And even many of the Apostles still probably experienced much of the Hebrew Scriptures in their popular Greek translation at the time: the Septuagint.

From the time of William Tyndale to today the whole of Christian Holy Writ has been translated into the English language in sundry times and diverse manners. Now, I present my own translation — not as some living and prophetic vicar of the Apostles themselves — but as one other rendition of their texts in the English language.

One of my principal inspirations came from David Bentley Hart’s own translation of the New Testament and his attempt to bring out the original meaning of the Greek words in fully English translations. For example, instead of transliterating the Greek christos as simply “Christ” as almost every other translation had done (and it is odd, on the one hand, that functionally-equivalent translations not only dull the style of the text to be as readable as a magazine but even leave a Greek word untranslated throughout their text at the same time; on the other hand, it is still not entirely clear why any English translation at all wouldn’t translate a word that many even mistake to be Jesus’ surname!), he fully translated it into English as “anointed” (as I also have done).  After all, the intention of any translator ought to be to bring their reader to a greater understanding of the original text — whether that’s the big picture, as the more paraphrastic translations do, or in every detail and down to the very word. So, for example, I have also translated synagoge as “gathering”; likewise, angelos is “messenger” (and in fact some translations have to render the word as such when referring to human messengers [like in Luke 7:24] despite the fact that the word is the same for both spiritual and human emissaries).

As much as I praise Hart for his achievement, however, he left other words that he felt to be too profound for English un-translated, like logos (and even angelos, as above). While hardly any Greek scholar would disagree that the term logos is flattened infinitely in any translation, the word logos does not bring anyone who does not already know its underlying historio-philosophical implications to any better of an understanding of the significance of John’s use of the word. In addition, those that would be fully familiar with all the Greek history behind the word would already be well aware that the word is underlying all translations of John 1. So I, as the first in my endless series of compromises (as Robert Alter describes all translation work), decided to render the term as a word that was at least understandable to any English reader (And any English reader who would have needed Hart’s footnote to explain its significance could just as easily see my own commentary on the verse).

The one term that I was more tempted to keep Greek — along with Hart and Scott McKnight — was kosmos, with its reference not only to the whole world but also its order. Nevertheless, readers who are already familiar with the Greek root behind the word connecting it to the idea of order (kosmeo) would already be aware of this and those who weren’t aware of it would not gain anything from me leaving the word untranslated. So, in contrast to the KJV, NRSV, NASB, and even David Bentley Hart, I can offer my translation as an actual fully English translation from front to back! With the exception of the Greek daimonion (which is already a word with the same meaning in English at this point; in fact, it would not only be unnecessary to translate the word, but would even complicate what is already understandable by the text alone) and otherwise non-Greek words that the author didn’t translate himself (raca in Matthew 5:22 and rhabboni throughout John’s Gospel; I have italicized all these transliterated words), I have left no word behind in my entirely English translation.

I found further insight from the New Testament scholar Scott McKnight, although I followed him in methodology more than in end result. McKnight not only made a point to steer clear of leaving Greek words transliterated, but even removed those words which had entered into English through Latin but which still had no more meaning in English as a loan word than they had had beforehand. Even though Hart had left the Greek word apostolos as “apostle” (which, again, is no more helpful than leaving logos or christos alone), I followed McKnight in using “sent one” instead. I likewise translated telios as “complete” instead of “perfect” (from the Latin perfectus; see my commentary on Matthew 5:48 for the different Greek connotation of the word), mathetes as “apprentice” instead of “disciple” (from the discipulus), and ethnoi as “nations” and not “Gentile” (Latin, gentilis).

It is also demonstrably false that the terms “apostle”, “disciple”, and “Gentile” are all just as easily understandable as “demon” at this point in the Christianized English-speaking world. Neither apostolos nor mathetes were religious terms designated just for twelve appointed followers of Jesus, but were every-day words meaning exactly what I have translated them as. Today “sent one” has no more of a religious connotation than any other word; in the same way, the word “apprentice” gives the English speaker a much better understanding of the vocation of the mathetai. Neither is “Gentile” an everyday word.

Again, as McKnight made a point to consistently translate each Greek word with the same Greek word, I did the same — though I often used different words than his. Consequently, I have opted for broader and more ambiguous renditions of original Greek words (the King James Version also did a good job at this. Arguably, it did even better than the New American Standard Bible). In fact, I even translated Greek words that have a noun and verb form the same way in English. Instead of rendering the Greek verb marturo as “testify” and its nominal form, martyria, as “witness”, I opted for the most obvious option — “witness” — since the word in English can likewise appear as either a verb or noun. Likewise, hagiastheto has often been translated “hallowed” in Matthew 6:9, but in other forms that same verb has become “sanctified” (from the Latin sanctus; see 1 Corinthians 6:11 in most translations for one such example) in most other places, and its nominal form, hagias, has been rendered as “holy”. I, on the other hand, have rendered the verbal form as “to make holy” (in every place) and the noun itself as “holy” so that any English reader could easily see the relationship between the two Greek words underlying my renditions. Pistis (“faith”) and pisteuo (“to believe”) I have also rendered as “faith” and “to have faith in” respectively. While there were a few instances in which I compromised my principle of consistency, each of those instances (discussed further below) was to highlight a word play otherwise obscured. Besides these,  the only word which I was still unable to translate consistently was akuoo. To have even a semi-naturally sounding text, I had to switch between “hear” and “listen” depending on the context.

I have also sided with McKnight and Hart in keeping Greek verbs in the present tense in my own translation. However, I have not taken nearly the same amount of interpretive liberties in my translation as McKnight. He renders the word nomos as “Covenant Code” (despite the fact that, even if this word were translated to be consistent with the Hebrew meaning of the word that was translated as nomos by the Septuagint translators, it would still be “teaching” or “instruction”) and pistis as “allegience” (this second case is much more understandable yet it still defeats the entire philosophy he claims to have committed himself to since the word often has a broader implication and must be translated as “faith”). Furthermore, McKnight also leaves a whole slew of other Greek words untranslated (pascha, kosmos, and christos). In these cases, I have been more allegiant to his philosophy than even he has.

I have also left Greek idioms — as odd as they may be to English ears — about as word-for-word as they can be while still being understandable. Thus, 2 John 1:12 says “Having many things to write to you all I do not want to do so through papyrus and black ink, but I hope to come to you all and to speak mouth to mouth.” And the even more obscure to the Anglophone is Jesus’ response to his mother at the wedding at Cana, “What to me and you, woman?” (John 2:4). Also, zoe eis ton aionion is rendered on a word-for-word basis as “life into the age” rather than the more simple “eternal life” opted for by all other English translations (again, Hart and McKnight excluded).

In keeping in line with my all-words-English philosophy, I have also used contemporary English words throughout and updated some words that have become unfamiliar or fallen out of favor in everyday English. To refresh those already overly-familiar readers, I have rendered kyrie as “master” and not “lord”. In the same spirit I have also used the inclusive “siblings” for the plural adelphoi (only irregularly translated as “brothers” without any reference to women today). However, to distinguish the singular and plural pronoun autos, I used “him” for all of the singulars. I have also taken from the new Y’ALL Version in distinguishing the second-person singular and plural: Humeis becomes “you all” in John’s Epistles and other formal sections of my translation work and “y’all” in all other sections of the text. Besides this, I have also focused on reproducing the Greek syntax to the very best of my ability.

Far from the least significant, my final focus in translating portions of the New Testament writings was style. My principal inspiration for translating the Scriptures in this manner was the renowned Hebraist Everett Fox and his magnificent Five Books of Moses and Early Prophets. Whereas other translations tend to categorize their translations as either formally equivalent (translating ‘literally”; word-for-word) or functionally equivalent (translating idiomatically; thought-for-thought), he — and the even more renowned Robert Alter — focused on making more of a “forcefully-equivalent” translation. That is, instead of just being literal, they made their translations literary. I too hope to demonstrate the style of John as much as his substance.

But before moving to John’s writings, I want to give an example of the kind of word-play obscured by virtually all English translations in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ most famous teaching: ‘the Sermon on the Mount’. In Jesus’ final commendation concerning religious practices, he instructs his followers not to show off their fasting like the hypokritas (which doesn’t mean “hypocrite” as English-speakers use the word today as much as it does a stage actor) but to wash their faces and anoint them with oil (in today’s terms, this would be like a woman putting on fancy make-up). In contrast to these phony play-actors who make their faces look dark (Greek, aphanizo) so they can show off their fasting to others so that they appear like bright lights (phaneo), Jesus commands his followers to hide their fasting so that only their invisible Father will see it. The first of these two Greek words, aphanizo, means to darken (I have rendered it as “sullen”) and the other most literally means to lighten something up but has been used throughout the sermon to talk about showing something (this is its more commonly used meaning). Both these words are based on the Greek root word for light. So, to demonstrate to the reader the irony underlying the vain attempt of these actors (while maintaining consistency so that the reader can connect the verb to its past appearances), I rendered the later word as “to be shown as radiant”. Thus the Greek word play is apparent even to English readers (despite my inconsistent translation of phaneo):

"And when y’all fast,
don’t be like the gloomy actors,
for they sullen their faces
so that their fasts may be shown as radiant to the people." (Matthew 6:16, my translation)

John is no less a master of word-play, however, and often uses two totally different meanings of a single word. There are three prominent examples of this in his Gospel Account. The more simple stories where such a word-play occurs are in John 4. Jesus is speaking to some Samaritan woman who had been shamed for being passed around by a bunch of men. Jesus tells the woman that he has some special water greater than that found in the legendary well of Jacob they are standing by: “If you saw the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me something to drink’, you would ask him and he would have given you zon water” (John 4:10, my translation). Zon here is always translated “living” and indeed the word does mean that, but, when describing water, the most natural meaning is that the water is moving or running. It is no wonder, then, that the woman responds to Jesus so naturally:

“Master, you have no bucket
and the well is deep;
so from where do you have the running water?
You aren’t greater than our father Jacob,
who was given this well
and he drank out of it,
and his children,
and his livestock?” (verses 11-12)

Since the Samaritan woman understands Jesus to be speaking of clean, moving water rather than some Israelite Fountain of Youth, she responds to him nonchalantly. The issue, however, is with rendering this in English. If one were to translate zon with the meaning that Jesus obviously intended for the lady to eventually understand (“water of life”), the woman’s words make no sense. If, on the other hand, one translates the words as the Samaritan woman understood it (“running water”), then the reader is left at least just as puzzled as she was at first (but without a key for decoding the words after having read the rest of the narrative!). So, once again, I compromised with a translation using a slash between the two words with the word leading to the most common Greek interpretation of the phrase appearing first and the obscure although literal meaning of zon after:

“If you saw the gift of God
and who is saying to you,
‘Give me something to drink’,
you would ask him
and he would have given you running/living water.” (John 4:10)

The other two examples come from an earlier pericope, in chapter 3, when Jesus is speaking with Nicodemus at night (since Nicodemus, unlike Jesus, doesn’t have the boldness to act out in a faith that doesn’t take into account the thoughts of others) and he tells him that he needs to be born anothen. Even before I learned Greek I had heard that this ought to be translated as “from above” rather than “again”. And indeed, a simple Strong’s Concordance search will yield results that demonstrate the fact that the word is often times pointing to the top: in John 19:11 Jesus tells Pilate “You wouldn’t have authority against me if it had not been given to you anothen”; in verse 23 of that same chapter it is said “the tunic was seamless woven whole from anothen” (both my translations); finally, Mark 15:38 speaks of the veil of the temple being torn in two anothen to the bottom.

While it is true that this was what Jesus intended to be understood (this is obvious even just from the context — Jesus talks about being born of the Spirit in verse 5 and John will even refer to Jesus as coming anothen in verse 31 of this same chapter), it is also true that “again” is not only within the semantic range of the word (see for example, Galatians 4:9) but is how Nicodemus understands it. While I was quick to judge the many translations that translated it with this latter meaning (This was not how Jesus wanted to be understood, so why was this how translators were representing his words?), Nicodemus’ response — “How is a person able to be begotten being old? One is not able to go into the belly of his mother and be begotten?” (3:4) — makes no sense if this is what Jesus meant (as I had hinted earlier, Nicodemus’ response incorrectly assumes anothen to mean “again” here). So, as in the case of the story with the Samaritan woman, I once again provided a translation with both words: the word with the most understandable interpretation to the average ear first and what Jesus’ intended for Nicodemus to understand second.

However, the double-meaning of anothen is only the first of the word-plays Jesus will use with Nicodemus. He goes on to explain being born from above in saying that “The pneuma blows wherever it desires, and you hear its sound, but you didn’t see where it comes from and where it’s going” (verse 8). As a quick survey of all the English translations of this verse demonstrates, translations have decided to translate pneuma in accordance with what makes the most sense in English (it is the wind that blows about and has visible effects while remaining invisible itself). However, instead of a “single-entendree”, this time, Jesus intends for his audience to understand both possible meanings of the word. And in fact, without assuming that the two are deeply connected at least (and altogether the same, at most), this verse serves as no argument for Jesus’ thesis a few verses earlier: “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone isn’t begotten of water and pneuma, they won’t be able to go into the kingdom of God” (verse 5). Although it is obvious that the pneuma in verse 8 is the wind, it is not clear to the reader in most any other language that that word is the same as the one used in verses 5 and 6. So, as in the case of the past two tricky translation decisions, I doubled-up on my compromises for the narrative with another split-translation of the word to show the continuity of Jesus’ overall argument.

With all that I did to preserve what I felt was in most continuity with the original Greek, I indulged myself in taking one liberty with the text: I formatted everything in lines. While this is certainly a break away from all of the manuscripts that we have, I did it precisely to bring out the structure behind the text. Take for example the contrast Jesus makes between celestial and terrestrial bread in John 6:

"Moses hasn’t given to y’all the bread of the sky,
but my Father gives to y’all the true bread of the sky;
for the bread of God is the one descending of the sky
and is giving life to the world.” (verses 32-33)

As my lining of this randomly-selected section demonstrates, this one section of Jesus’ speech is structured in a chiasm: A) Moses’ bread isn’t from the sky; B) the Father’s bread is from the sky; B’) God’s bread comes down from the sky; A’) it gives life to the world. The movement goes from the land to heaven and stays in heaven for another line before moving back down to the earth. Clearly Jesus had carefully ordered every word (and John just the same) — all I was doing was highlighting that fact. There are many more examples of such structures that I believe my translation does an excellent job of showing but I will leave all these for the reader to explore.

All in all, my translation philosophy has mostly remained the same as when I first started. Rewritten, the underlying principles for my translation philosophy are:

1. Use only common contemporary English language (original transliterations excluded).

2. Keep the full semantic range of every Greek word in its English rendition.

3. Represent each Greek word with one English word and vice versa.

4. Follow the syntax of the original in its emphasis as much as is possible.

While I can’t say with much certainty at all that John or Jesus would speak to us today in English with the same words that I have translated from the Greek, I can confidently claim that, with the power of the Spirit, my fallible translation can nonetheless carry across his message. After all, John, already out-living all of the other Apostles, wrote his gospel account with narratives and lessons from Jesus otherwise unheard of. And, for the reader before the Gospel of John, perhaps it wouldn’t have been unfair to think that the Synoptic Gospels told all that there was to know about Jesus. But even John himself safeguards against assuming that everything Jesus did could be bound between the four books, concluding his gospel by saying that “there are also many things Jesus did, which, being written according to one, I suppose the world couldn’t contain the books written” (21:25). Based sheerly on the amount of original English translations in the past century alone, one starts to think that perhaps the same is true of translations of the Apostolic Writ. In accordance with the rabbinic saying, it is apparently possible for 10 Bible scholars to enter the same room and come back out with 11 different translations. While mine may be the eleventh of these translations, I nonetheless hope that it will help readers read and discover the first.

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