Following are a number of back-translations of 1 Corinthians 15:55:
Uma: “God will free us from all that brings death, death will have no more power over us.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “We (dual) are no longer destroyed when we (dual) die. We (dual) are no longer afraid to die because we (dual) are no longer punished.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “‘We (incl.) no longer have any fear of death because there’s no longer anyone who will die. There’s no longer any sorrow of ours because of death, because it has been replaced with life without end.'” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “Therefore we can say, ‘Will death in fact defeat-me/us (RQ implying of course not)? Does it in fact have power over us?'” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “‘Well where now, death, is your victory? Where now, death, is your deadly-poison?'” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “Death then will not have power to kill. Then it cannot conquer’ it says.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed.
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Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or modern English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.
As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator2002, p. 210ff. ), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.
In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.
Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”
In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.
Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking.” (Source Philip Noss)
In the most recent Manchu translation of 1835 (a revision of an earlier edition from 1822), God is never addressed with a pronoun but with “father” (ama /ᠠᠮᠠ) instead. Chengcheng Liu (in this post on the Cambridge Centre for Chinese Theology blog ) explains: “In Manchu tradition, as in Chinese etiquette, second-person pronouns could be considered disrespectful when speaking to superiors or spiritual beings. Manchu Shamanist prayers avoided si [‘you’] and sini [‘your’] for this very reason. To use them for God would be, in Lipovzoff’s [one of the two translators] words, ‘the most uncouth and indecent way to speak to the Almighty — as if He were a servant or slave.’ There was also a grammatical problem. In Manchu, si and sini could refer to both singular and plural subjects. For a faith that insisted on the singularity of God, this was potentially confusing. By contrast, repeating ama removed any ambiguity.”
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Like a number of other East Asian languages, Japanese uses a complex system of honorifics, i.e. a system where a number of different levels of politeness are expressed in language via words, word forms or grammatical constructs. These can range from addressing someone or referring to someone with contempt (very informal) to expressing the highest level of reference (as used in addressing or referring to God) or any number of levels in-between. One way Japanese shows different degree of politeness is through the choice of a second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used anata (あなた) is typically used when the speaker is humbly addressing another person.
In these verses, however, omae (おまえ) is used, a cruder second person pronoun, that Jesus for instance chooses when chiding his disciples. (Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
The first part of this verse overlaps with verse 53. That is why Good News Bible has started with the phrase “So when this takes place,” and then combined the first two clauses into one: “and the mortal has been changed into the immortal.” However, the overlap in meaning between verses 54 and 53 is even greater than what Good News Bible suggests. The clause When the perishable puts on the imperishable largely repeats verse 53a, and the clause the mortal puts on immortality largely repeats verse 53b, in each case with a change of tense. So logically the two clauses the perishable puts on … the mortal puts on immortality could be omitted. The content of these clauses is included in Good News Bible‘s “when this takes place.” Another way of treating this repetition would be to repeat the word When before the words the mortal; for example, “when the mortal.” The repetition of “when” would indicate the overlap of thought and language. Some common language translations, including earlier editions of Good News Bible, agree with Revised Standard Version in repeating all the material from verse 53. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, however, has simply “when this happens.”
Several scribes omitted the words corresponding to puts on the imperishable, and the mortal, and there are other Greek manuscripts where the whole of verse 54 is omitted. Translations and commentaries generally prefer the longer text, as it seems typical of Paul’s use of repetition, such as that found in verses 42-44.
The saying that is written: in many languages there is clash between “say” and “write.” Good News Bible rightly removes this, and Good News Bible also makes it plain that Paul refers to “scripture,” not to some popular “saying” or proverb.
Paul quotes an otherwise unknown Greek version of Isa 25.8, followed by Hos 13.14. The keywords in both are death and victory.
Swallowed up is figurative language that Good News Bible replaces by the literal language “is destroyed.” Barclay expands the metaphor to make it clearer: “Death is swallowed up, and victory is complete!” In languages where poetry is popular, it may be possible to translate these two lines as poetry. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch and Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente set out both quotations as poetry, but also divide the first quotation into two lines.
Death is spelled with a capital in Good News Bible because death is addressed as if it were a person. Translators should consider whether this is natural in their own language, or whether it is better to speak of death in the third person in verse 55 as well as in verse 54. The questions in verse 55 are rhetorical. In some languages these will need to be replaced by statements; for example, “Your victory, Death, has gone.”
Sting: the word for sting can also mean “goad,” as in Acts 26.14, and in Rev 9.10 it refers to a scorpion’s sting, pain, and harm, though death is not suggested. It is impossible to be sure what Paul’s meaning is, since he does not use this word in his writings outside of this passage. It seems evident, then, that the two possible translations are the figurative sting and the nonfigurative “power to hurt” (Good News Bible).
Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, 2nd edition. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1985/1994. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
“Death, where is your (sing.) victory?
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“Will death defeat us?
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“Where are the dead people? ⌊There are none.⌋
15:55b Where, O Death, is your sting?”
Death, where is your power to hurt us?”
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Does death have power to hurt us?”
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Where are the people in pain while they are dying? ⌊There are none.⌋ ”
Living Water is produced for the Bible translation movement in association with Lutheran Bible Translators. Lyrics derived from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®).
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