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April 21 - May 11, 2020
linguists have long pondered if our worldview shapes our language or the other way around.
since the pioneering work of Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941) in linguistic relativity, most scholars concede that our culture (via our language) shapes our worldview, which in turn filters what we notice and how we interpret reality.
Suffice it to say that language is a lot of things, but that many of the most important aspects of language are not words.
Language is the most obvious cultural difference that separates us from the Bible. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and the New Testament in Greek (with a few Aramaic words).
It is important for us to remember that when we read the Bible in our native language, mostly what has been changed is the words.
Like Procrustes of Greek mythology, who shortened or stretched his guests to fit his bed, our unconscious assumptions about language encourage us to reshape the biblical narrative to fit our framework.
Sufficiency:
The words we use are a good indication of what we consider important. As our values change, so does our language.
the frequency and number of words we have for a given thing or experience and its value in our worldview are connected.
squabbling.
Disputas
Old Testament scholars will be quick to point out the challenge of translating chesed (pronounced KHEH-sed). In the nasb, we see it translated lots of ways: lovingkindness (Gen 24:27), loyalty (Hos 6:4), loveliness (Is 40:6) and mercy (2 Sam 15:20). Chesed doesn’t mean lots of things. But we need lots of English words to circle around a concept for which we don’t have a word. Chesed is “a kindly-loyal-merciful-faithful-(the-sort-that-shows-up-in-actions) kind of love.”
Paul struggles for a Greek word to describe the fruit (singular) of the Spirit. He describes it as a “love-joy-peace-patience-kindness-goodness-faithfulness-gentleness-self-control kind of fruit” (Gal 5:22). Paul is not giving us a list of various fruits, from which we may pick a few. Rather, he gives us a list of words that circle around the one character of a Spirit-filled life he is trying to describe.
trite,
Trillado
Jesus meant, “If you are a peacemaker, then you are in your happy place.”
maybe the reason we North Americans struggle to find makarios in our personal lives is because we don’t have a word in our native language to denote it.
Equiva...
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By the late Middle Ages, church leaders insisted this system is what Jesus had in mind when he called sinners to repent—that do penance was equivalent to (meant the same thing as) repent.
The medieval church had superimposed certain presuppositions onto Scripture by mistakenly assuming that the Latin term for do penance was equivalent to the Greek term for repent.
when we run across a concept in a foreign language that describes an experience that’s familiar to us, we assume they mean what we mean. Well, they don’t.
Sometimes there is no equivalent.
Several Eastern languages have no wor...
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“My personal business” was a nonsensical expression. Everybody knew what everybody was doing.
Of course, someone could find himself in a private location. In that case, an Indonesian would say he is in “a place where he feels lonely.”
flabbergasted
Estupefacto
In other words, while Westerners crave privacy, privacy is a situation that Indonesians, for example, seek to avoid.
These different cultural associations with privacy affect the way Westerners and non-Westerners read Scripture. We Westerners commonly think that Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, went to a private place in the garden of Gethsemane to pray (Mt 26:36-39). Actually, none of the Gospels say the place he prayed was private or solitary: “Sit here while I go over there” (Mt 26:36);
When my Indonesian students heard the traditional Western view—that Jesus was alone—they responded, “How dreadful Jesus must have felt.” We Americans assume that “Jesus needed a little alone time” to get ready to face his dreadful trial. We read our preferences into the story. We like to pray in solitary places, so we assume Jesus did too.
Yet verses that we think support this idea, such as “Be still, and know that I am God,” do not require a private time of stillness (Ps 46:10). Indonesians also love that verse. They like to remind me that God said that it was not good for man to be alone (Gen 2:18).
This is not to say that privacy is wrong, just that it is a neutral value. But when we impose it on the text, we can come away with unbiblical interpretations.
One likely explanation is that Luke translated (from Aramaic into Greek) what Jesus said and that Matthew translated what Jesus meant.
Matthew was already accustomed to moving between languages. Luke, a native Greek speaker, didn’t know what went without being said in the usage of Aramaic.
This problem—that language doesn’t always say what is meant—is due in part to the way the English language works.
English is a subject-verb language; it is actor- and action-oriented. We prefer sentences with a clear subject and a clear predicate, and we like it best when the verb is in the active voice.
Other languages can manage without a subject in these situations; in Indonesian, one can say, “Exists rain.”
English cries out for a subject. In sentences without a stated subject, one is always implied (“[You] Bring me that stapler”). Because English “needs” a subject, we tend to provide one.
This is why, as we pointed out above, “Blessed are the peacemakers” turns in our minds to “God blesses the peacemakers.”
We prefer clear, direct language in which agency and action is easy to understand.
Sometimes we assign agency (and thus motives) where the biblical text is actually silent.
A frequent translation of John 14:1 reads,
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” The English suggests that I need to take action over my heart. Yet, in John’s text, Jesus is giving the command to the hearts of his disciples to stop being troubled. In our minds, that doesn’t even really make sense. But perhaps Jesus unders...
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In the New Testament, for example, the word charis means “grace.” Pistis means “faith.”
What we didn’t know until recently—what went without being said in Paul’s day—was that those two words together described the relationship between a patron and his or her client.
the ancient patron was a wealthy and powerful individual (male or female) who looked after his or her “friends” (clients).
Like most unwritten cultural rules, everyone knew what was expected of a patron and a client, even though expectations weren’t engraved on a wall.
When Paul was staying in Thessalonica, it was reasonable to expect Jason to handle the “Paul problem,” which he did by asking Paul to leave town (Acts 17).
In the Roman system, likewise, the client couldn’t earn the “favor”; the patron showed “kindness” to help.
The client was now a “friend” of the patron, but not a peer. The client was expected to reciprocate with loyalty, public praise, readiness to help the patron (as much as he could) and, most importantly, gratitude.[7] This kind gift had strings attached. (All gifts in antiquity had strings attached.[8]) Seneca called it “a sacred bond.”[9]
We know well the Christian terms grace and faith, but these were common before Paul used them. They were part of the language of patronage.
We see that when Paul explained our new relationship with God, he used something everyone understood: the ancient system of patronage.[12]
Clarity over Ambiguity:
