I would like to take you on a little multilingual stroll through a well-known text of Scripture that marks the beginning of one of the most important days in the history of the Christian church: the story of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.
Let’s begin with verse 2:1 in the scholarly and masterful 1999 German translation by renowned New Testament scholar Klaus Berger and leading translation scholar Christiane Nord (back-translated from German into English):
On the fiftieth day after Passover, on the Jewish Pentecost festival, all the apostles and the female disciples were sitting together with Mary and the male relatives of Jesus.
English Bible readers are likely more familiar with this translation from the NIV — “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place” — but they are both translations of the same text.
David Powlison (1949–2019) once inverted Psalm 23 in English to portray what life feels like and looks like whenever God vanishes from sight. He called it AntiPsalm 23.
I’m on my own.
No one looks out for me or protects me.
I experience a continual sense of need. Nothing’s quite right.
I’m always restless. I’m easily frustrated and often disappointed.
It’s a jungle — I feel overwhelmed. It’s a desert — I’m thirsty.
My soul feels broken, twisted, and stuck. I can’t fix myself.
I stumble down some dark paths.
Still, I insist: I want to do what I want, when I want, how I want.
But life’s confusing. Why don’t things ever really work out?
I’m haunted by emptiness and futility — shadows of death.
I fear the big hurt and final loss.
Death is waiting for me at the end of every road,
but I’d rather not think about that.
I spend my life protecting myself. Bad things can happen.
I find no lasting comfort.
I’m alone . . . facing everything that could hurt me.
Are my friends really friends?
Other people use me for their own ends.
I can’t really trust anyone. No one has my back.
No one is really for me — except me.
And I’m so much all about ME, sometimes it’s sickening.
I belong to no one except myself.
My cup is never quite full enough. I’m left empty.
Disappointment follows me all the days of my life.
Will I just be obliterated into nothingness?
Will I be alone forever, homeless, free-falling into void?
Sartre said, “Hell is other people.”
I have to add, “Hell is also myself.”
It’s a living death,
and then I die.
“This devotion that is intended to accompany you from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday presents Jesus as he approaches his death and is glorified in his resurrection in a way you might not have encountered him: Through the words of languages from around the world. Find out how other cultural norms and concepts find their expression in Bible translation and how that can have a deep impact on your own appreciation and understanding of God’s love for you.”
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Palm Sunday is here — the day in many churches when Sunday School children parade into church waving palm branches (or here in the cool Pacific Northwest, fern branches), much to the older church members’ delight.
It’s a lovely tradition, though its cute factor may not fully represent the intensity of the day it commemorates — Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem — just a few days before his brutal crucifixion. Jesus himself, of course, was only too painfully aware of the contrast, and that the jubilant crowds would turn on him in a matter of days.
To understand the nuances as Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem unfolds, let’s have a look at how different languages portray this day in the Bible. These examples come from the freely available Translation Insights & Perspectives (TIPs) tool, an interactive library of data that gives us a deeper understanding of how people from around the world talk to and about God.
Many sermons have explained that the donkey Jesus chose to ride symbolizes both victory and humility as laid out in Zechariah 9:9. And most of us know the stereotypical characteristics of a donkey, like their long ears and proverbial stubbornness. But reading the story in languages from cultures where donkeys are an integral part of daily life can help us understand deeper layers to the story.
For example, when Jesus sends two of his disciples to find a “colt that had never been ridden” in Luke 19:30 and Mark 11:2, this lengthy descriptive phrase in English comes from an equally lengthy phrase in Greek (“pōlon eph’ hon oudeis oupō anthrōpōn ekathisen”).
Why?
Because neither language has a single term to describe such an animal. Speakers of Kalmyk in Southern Russia, however, do have a specialized word — “arkhlata“ — for exactly that concept: “a colt that has never been ridden.” Through their precise language and cultural experience, the 80,000 speakers of Kalmyk therefore have a much easier way to immediately visualize the unpredictability and unruliness of Jesus’ never-ridden young donkey.
As we approach Christmas and look back at this long year, “peace” may not be the first word most of us will associate with the last twelve months. Still, I — and I suspect many who read these words — long for exactly that: peace.
The Many Meanings of Peace
If we take time to ponder this longed-for “peace,” we quickly realize its very broad range of meanings.
There is the absence or cessation of strife or war. There’s the inner peace that, similar to the first meaning, is also the absence or cessation of struggles, but within a single person. Google surprisingly offers the “peace greeting” used in many Christian churches as the third possible meaning of “peace.”
La escena bíblica del día de Pentecostés nos permite ver a un Dios que entiende que el idioma va más allá de la mera comunicación.
Tan solo unos días después de la muerte y resurrección de Cristo, el Espíritu Santo fue enviado, y con Él, la capacidad de los apóstoles de hablar en otras lenguas. Los visitantes presentes en ese lugar, que habían viajado de lugares tan lejanos como Irak, Libia e Italia, de pronto pudieron escuchar el mensaje del evangelio en sus lenguas maternas. Escuchar sobre Jesús de esta forma tan profundamente cercana sorprendió y maravilló a la audiencia en Jerusalén y produjo una certeza profunda sobre la veracidad de la misión que Jesús había encarnado. (El hecho de que estos visitantes probablemente pudieran entender el griego o el arameo, las lenguas predominantes en Jerusalén en ese tiempo, remarca esto).
After Jesus had entered the water, God’s Sacred Breath entered Jesus to fill and indwell him, so he followed his voice into an area where all noise was cut off. He went without food to worship for as many days and nights as two people have digits, and his hunger ate him. There his soul was tested by the head of the worldlings.
Does this sound vaguely familiar? You may recognize the passage as the first two verses of the fourth chapter of Luke — the beginning of one account of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness, but it’s been translated with an amalgamation of terminology from eleven different languages that renders a recognizable story strange and somewhat startling.
Some terminology might seem curious to English speakers, but these phrases are all drawn from real Bibles read by and for real people with real Christian faith.
This familiar story of Jesus’s temptation is told in all three of the synoptic gospels and holds a special place in how we view and think of Jesus, especially at this time of year during the 40-day season of Lent when many of us also fast or undertake other spiritual practices.
“English readers are blessed when it comes to Bible translations.”
This statement on its own could mean several different things. It could mean that Bibles translated into English are better than those translated into other languages. Another possible meaning could be that English as a language is more qualified than other languages to express the meaning of the Bible. Or it might mean that there are a lot more translations in English than in any other language.
It might be disappointing for some to hear it, but the first and second explanations are simply not true. There are excellent English translations of the Bible, and there are excellent translations in other languages. English is equally equipped to translate the original languages — and equally limited in finding just the right words — as other languages around the world.
The third explanation is true, though. No language has produced as many different translations of the Christian scriptures as English. Bible Gateway has dozens of the most popular English versions — and even that barely scratches the surface of the 900 or so partial or complete English translations.
In addition to this embarrassment of riches, yet another resource for readers of English ties in with the first and second reasons to emphasize how our cup overflows.
