Podcast of "All Translation Is Interpretation" (MP3)
Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
Last Sunday I mentioned something written by Kurt Vonnegut. In the same essay I quoted last week he writes that the first thing to get lost in translation is a joke.[1] He goes on to say that any joke written skillfully by the authors of scripture in its original language is doomed to sound like Charlton Heston in “The Ten Commandments” when rendered in the King James. Unfortunately it’s true. The only thing to get butchered worse in translation than jokes is poetry. Our New Testament reading contains neither jokes nor poetry, but there is a translation issue that is very important to the gospel and how we live into it.
Dr. Kristin M. Swenson, author of “Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time,” recently wrote an article called “Five Things Everyone Should Know About The Bible, Believe It or Not.” In it she wrote something that I often say, but did it so much better that I want to share it with you now.
If you're reading the Bible in English, you're reading a translation. With the exception of a small minority of Aramaic texts, the books of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible were all written in Hebrew. The books of the New Testament were written in Greek. Every translation is by nature interpretation. If you've ever studied a foreign language, you know that it's impossible to convert exactly and for all time the literature or speech of any given language into another. A translator has to make choices. There are often several ways to render the original text, and changes in English affect the meaning we read as well.[2]
The best example of “every translation is by nature interpretation” is found in our reading today. In John 3:3 we begin with Nicodemus who hears Jesus say, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God
In the opposite way, the New Revised Standard Version renders verse three like this: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God
So what we have is two different translations of scripture with the opposite translation choice. One says we need to be born “again” while nodding to “from above” and the other saying we need to be “born from above” with a nod to being “born again.” It’s not as if either translation comes from the fringes of biblical translation either. These are mainstream main line translations used by readers and scholars everyday. So what’s the difference?
This is one of those times when the Greek language geek in me gets a workout. As Dr. Swenson noted, the New Testament was originally written in Greek. The word used in the Greek version of this verse can be translated into English as either “from above” or “again.”[5] It can also mean “from the beginning” or “anew.” But the English language lacks a word that can mean “from above” or “again” or “from the beginning” or “anew” all at once. It would be great if we had a word that could carry all of these nuances, but we don’t.
Imagine if translators had tried to do this, imagine if they had tried to connect all of these nuances. Imagine Jesus saying, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom unless he is born again from above anew from the beginning.” The text may be accurate, but it’s just not right is it?
Since Greek does have a word that can mean all of these things at once and English doesn’t, translators have to make a decision about which way to render it. So Biblical editors have to decide which word to put into the text and which word to put into the footnote. Which ever translation decision is made, it will be correct, but not right. It will be right, but not complete. Going one way or the other is the only way, but doing so leaves something very important behind.
So which translation is the right translation, again or from above? I say being forced to make a choice and defend it may be important for biblical translators, but not so much for us. We don’t need to make that decision. We don’t have to make a choice between one and the other. We, we can say both. We can do what the translators cannot. Rather than seeing this as an either/or translation, we can say that according to Jesus, we must be born again and we must be born from above. This is because as each of these English translations colors the meaning of the verse a little differently, they each tells us a little something different about what Jesus meant when he said what he said.
To be born again is to tell us that our first birth is not enough, not for the kingdom of God kingdom of God
When Jesus tells us we are to be born from above, he gives us the knowledge that the rebirth comes from a source, it is not something that we can do ourselves. To be born from above means that the power of the Lord through the work of the Holy Spirit comes upon us as the children of God. In this way we are born from above.
To be born from the beginning gives us the perspective of starting life again without the weight of the baggage of our former lives. As Nicodemus says, it is impossible to enter the womb a second time; so to be born from the beginning must be a completely new beginning. In Romans, Paul talks about living under the law and under the wrath it brings.[6] We need to be born from the beginning so that we may live in God’s grace, not under God’s law. The law punishes the flesh; grace gives us all a new beginning.
To be born anew, when we look at these other definitions, these other translations, together we can come into birth anew and with it life anew. To be born anew reminds us of the birth from the womb we receive through our mothers and fathers. From them we receive the gift of life. To be born anew points us to the one who provides the source of this first birth and this new birth, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus says, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” To be born anew points to the bath that we receive in the waters of our baptism, the waters of our second birth. To be born anew is to leave an old life in the flesh behind in favor of one given by the Spirit of God. To be born anew is to be given a fresh start with God and God’s people as the body of Christ, the church. To be born anew is to be born, with all of the promise of new life in the kingdom of God
There is another piece of “translation anxiety” I want to share with you today from the fourteenth verse of our gospel reading. As I said earlier, this passage gives the Greek geek in me a workout; but this is the place where the pastor in me needs to flex more muscle than the biblical interpreter.
This is where Jesus says, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” The Old Testament reference is to Numbers 21 when the Lord becomes distraught over the nation of Israel .
In verses one and two, the Lord hears the cries of the nation and saves them from their oppressors. By verse five they’re back to whining and moaning and speaking against God. So God set loose fiery serpents to inflict death upon the nation. In Numbers 21:8, God tells Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” This is the situation Jesus is referring to when he says, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
Well, the word “lifted up” can mean two things, it can mean to raise vertically like the snake on a pole, or it can mean to exalt, to lift up voices in praise. So which did Jesus mean? This is when translators leave us standing waiting for the bus. “To lift up” can mean either of these things in Greek or English so there aren’t any language issues with biblical translation.
So what’s the difference? We are called to lift Jesus up. We are called to exalt the King of kings and Lord of lords. We are told to share his glory and his story with the world. We are called to lift him up with our voices and our works. This is our call and our vocation.
To Jesus, this being lifted up means something different. He will be lifted up like the serpent on the pole. He will be stretched on a tree like a common thief. He will be forced to carry his own cross up a Jerusalem
What’s the difference between being lifted up in praise and being lifted up physically? The first one is for us to do; the second is what he did. He gave his life that we may know life eternal. The Father gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. The world and all that we know was created in a word by the triune God. God does all of this so that the world may be saved by the person and work of Jesus who is the Christ.
To give us new life, Jesus will give his. We are in the second week of Lent, and over Lent’s forty days, we will journey along with Jesus on his journey. We take this trek through the Judean wilderness until we reach Jerusalem
Where we take this trip annually, Jesus takes this trip once, but gloriously for our sake once is enough. Because of his one trip, he is able to take us along through the end of eternity. He goes above and beyond the call of duty of any man. But with thanks and praise, he is not any man; he is the Son of Man and the Son of God.
It is on his cross that Jesus will die, and it is from his tomb he will rise again, and it is in his Spirit through the waters of our baptism that we will be born again, from above, anew, from the beginning.
All translation is interpretation, but the one thing we must never lose in the translation is the love of God. This is the love that sustained Jesus while he was forty days in the wilderness. This is the love that sustains us on our forty day journey with the Lord through Lent. As Jesus will be lifted up upon the cross in the way Moses lifted the snake, we must lift him up with our voices and in our works.
We are called to lift him; we are called to exalt him; and we do this not because we will be rewarded, but because we have already been rewarded with salvation and life eternal.
We are called to lift him; we are called to exalt him; and we do this not because we will be rewarded, but because we have already been rewarded with salvation and life eternal.
[1] Vonnegut, Kurt, “Palm Sunday.” Essay titled “Palm Sunday”
[2] Swenson, Kristin M., “Five Things Everyone Should Know About The Bible, Believe It or Not” on The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-m-swenson-phd/five-things-everyone-shou_b_835721.html?ref=fb&src=sp, retrieved March 17, 2011
[3] John 3:3, New International Version, New American Standard Bible, New Living Translation
[4] John 3:3, New Revised Standard Version
[5] anothen, The Greek New Testament, edited by Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, and Allen Wikgren, in cooperation with the Institute for New Testament Textual Research, Münster/Westphalia, Fourth Edition (with the same text as the Nestle-Aland 27th Edition of the Greek New Testament), Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft; Stuttgart, 1966, 1968, 1975 by the United Bible Societies (UBS) and 1993, 1994 by (German Bible Society)
[6] Romans 4:15
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