TRANSLATIONS

I recently heard a Bible teacher say, "Remember that every translation is an interpretation."

It's true and we don't give it enough thought.

I took a semester or two of Greek when I was at Asbury Seminary in the late 90s but I never used it and so I lost it. 

Since starting this doctorate program, I am wishing not only that I had Greek but that I had at least some knowledge of Hebrew.

In this age, though, there are plenty of options for those of us who don't know the original languages firsthand. I love looking up verses on Biblehub.com, for instance. You can find all sorts of information on the original wording there with just a little digging.

You'd be surprised at how often it can make a difference in how you understand a particular verse.

Take 1 Corinthians 14:20, for example. (For context, Paul has been lecturing the church on how much more edifying it is for individuals to practice prophesy during their gatherings than to have everyone speaking in tongues all at once. But this comes across like a good general rule for believers to follow in all matters.) 

Here's King James: 

Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.

And the NIV for comparison:

Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.

Here's an example of what you can locate on Biblehub.com for this passage:

All of the blue lines are clickable links.

1. The top blue line is the location of that Greek word in Strong's Greek Concordance - where you can see how it is used in other places across the New Testament.
2. The second blue line is the transliteration of the Greek word into the English alphabet, so you have some idea how it is pronounced.
3. The black line is the word written in the Greek alphabet.
4. The orange line is a basic English translation following the order of the original Greek.
5. The bottom blue line gives you information on how the word functions within the sentence - part of speech, number, tense, etc. 

You don't even have to go digging too deep into this to see its use - just being reminded that what you read in the English is obviously based on somebody else's interpretation is useful in and of itself. 

But when you discover the Greek teleioi translated by NIV as "adult" and KJV as "men" - "in your thinking be adults" - is translated elsewhere in the New Testament as "mature" or "complete" or even "perfect", it starts to reshape your understanding of what Paul is trying to communicate here. 

Or the word phresin that gets translated as "thinking" by the NIV and "understanding" by the KJV. This verse is the only place in the New Testament where phresin is used and it means literally the midriff - the core of the body. Your heart. It is the root word for our English "diaphragm". It involves both thinking and feeling, but we don't have an English word that quite captures both aspects. 

I'm still chewing on what all that means, but I can say this for sure: I love how it opens up new dimensions of meaning to consider when you don't just settle for perusing the English translations.