εἰ μὲν γὰρ ὁ ἐρχόμενος ἄλλον Ἰησοῦν κηρύσσει ὃν οὐκ ἐκηρύξαμεν, ἢ πνεῦμα ἕτερον λαμβάνετε ὃ οὐκ ἐλάβετε, ἢ εὐαγγέλιον ἕτερον ὃ οὐκ ἐδέξασθε, καλῶς ἀνέχεσθε.
4For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.
The Greek that is typically translated as “spirit” in English is translated in Warao as “obojona.” Obojona is a term that “includes the concepts of consciousness, will, attitude, attention and a few other miscellaneous notions.” (Source: Henry Osborn in The Bible Translator 1969, p. 74ff. )
See other occurrences of Obojona in the Warao New Testament.
In choosing a word for the Greek that is typically translated as “gospel” in English, a number of languages construct a phrase meaning “good news,” “joyful report” or “happiness-bringing words.” In some instances such a phrase may be slightly expanded in order to convey the proper meaning, e.g. “new good word” (Tzotzil), or it may involve some special local usage:
“In Rutul, it was only during the most recent consultant checking session that I realized that the Rutul word for Gospel – Incir (from Arabic إنجيل — Injil) — sounds and looks exactly like the word that means ‘fig’ in Rutul. This is a case of homonymy, in which two completely non-related words from differing historical sources have come to sound exactly alike. Most Rutul speakers know that incir means ‘fig’ because they grow this fruit in their yard or buy it at the market every week. However, because the religious sphere of discourse was heavily disparaged during the Soviet era, most people simply never encountered Incir with the meaning of ‘Gospel.’ This meaning of the word, which Rutuls of the pre-Soviet era knew from the Koran, simply fell into disuse and never had much reason for returning into contemporary Rutul since there is no Christian church established among the people. So if the translator continues to use the term Incir as the rendering for ‘Gospel,’ he runs the risk that most readers will, at best, read the word with a smile because they know that it also means ‘fig,’ and, at worst, will completely misunderstand the word. The seemingly ‘easy’ solution in this case is for the translator to use a Rutul neologism meaning ‘Joyful Message’ or ‘Good News,’ [see above] instead of Incir; but in fact it is not all that easy to make this change if the translator himself insists on using the historical word because at least some Rutuls still understand it as meaning ‘Gospel.’ This is a situation in which the translation team has to gradually grow into the understanding that a fully intelligible translation of Scripture is preferable to one that maintains old words at the cost of alienating much of the readership.”
For “good news,” see also Isaiah 52:7.
The inclusive “we” specifically includes the addressee (“you and I and possibly others”), while the exclusive “we” specifically excludes the addressee (“he/she/they and I, but not you”). This grammatical distinction is called “clusivity.” While Semitic languages such as Hebrew or most Indo-European languages such as Greek or English do not make that distinction, translators of languages with that distinction have to make a choice every time they encounter “we” or a form thereof (in English: “we,” “our,” or “us”).
For this verse, translators typically select the exclusive form (only referring to the author).
Source: SIL International Translation Department (1999)
Following are a number of back-translations of 2 Corinthians 11:4:
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 formal plural suffix to the second person pronoun (“you” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. In these verses, anata-gata (あなたがた) is used, combining the second person pronoun anata and the plural suffix -gata to create a formal plural pronoun (“you” [plural] in English).
(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
The word For connects verse 4 both to verse 3, indicating why Paul is concerned, and to verse 1, indicating why he expects that they should bear with him also, since they are willing to tolerate those who preach a gospel contrary to what Paul preaches. New American Bible shows the connection more clearly by beginning this verse “I say this because….”
The words if some one comes should not be understood to mean that Paul is talking about a hypothetical situation, that is, about an event only imagined, but one which could indeed happen at any time. Verses 19-20 make clear that he is dealing with a problem already present in Corinth. To avoid suggesting that Paul is speaking hypothetically, Good News Translation omits the word if. And other English versions use “when” or “whenever.” The words some one may refer to a group or possibly to a representative person. Though the relationship with verse 5 is not entirely clear, Paul is probably referring to a representative from the group he calls the “superlative apostles” in the next verse (see also 12.11). Paul appears to be referring to someone from outside the Corinthian church, so Revised English Bible says “if some newcomer proclaims.” Or, to avoid giving the impression that Paul is not referring to a real life situation, one may prefer to say “whenever a newcomer comes and….”
Preaches another Jesus: in many languages it is awkward to talk about “preaching a person.” Rather it is more natural to say “preach a message about a person” or “preach the story of a person.” Although expressions like “preach Jesus” may have entered into the vocabulary of church members, translators should avoid language that is exclusive to Christians and use what is most natural for all speakers of the language. The idea is clearly that of preaching a message that is not consistent with the facts about Jesus. Some may say “tells you about a different Jesus” or “preaches another message concerning Jesus.”
Implicit in the expressions from the one you received and from the one you accepted is that the Corinthians received a spirit and accepted a gospel “from us,” that is, from Paul and his associates. Good News Translation and Bible en français courant make this information explicit.
You submit to it readily enough: this part of the verse may have to be transposed to a position much earlier in the structure of some languages, as in Good News Translation “you gladly tolerate….” It may also be necessary to break the verse down into two or more sentences:
• You seem so eager to accept a new person when he comes and tells you about a different Jesus. That is not the Jesus we told you about. And you happily pay attention when you receive a spirit and a message that are not like the Spirit and the message that we brought to you.
A different sort of restructuring of this verse is found in Contemporary English Version:
• We told you about Jesus, and you received the Holy Spirit and accepted our message. But you let some people tell you about another Jesus. Now you are ready to receive another spirit and accept another message.
Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellingworth, Paul. A Handbook on Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
11:4a For if someone comes and proclaims
Because if anyone comes to you (plur.)
-or-
Whenever someone comes to you
-or-
For someone arrives among you
11:4b a Jesus other than the One we proclaimed,
and preaches a different Jesus, not the one we preached, (Good News Translation)
-or-
and proclaims things about Jesus that disagree with what we (excl.) proclaimed,
-or-
and preaches a different meaning about Jesus’ sayings and deeds than our preaching.
11:4c or if you receive a different spirit than the One you received,
or if you accept a different spirit, not the one you accepted from us,
-or-
or you agree to a different spirit than the ⌊Holy⌋ Spirit whom we taught you about,
-or-
He tells you about a different spirit than the ⌊Holy⌋ Spirit, the spirit we had told you about earlier and you accepted.
11:4d or a different gospel than the one you accepted,
or ⌊if you accept⌋ a different gospel, not the one you accepted from us,
-or-
or news different from the good news about Jesus,
-or-
He tells you what he calls the gospel of Jesus but it is different from what we taught you earlier and you accepted.
11:4e you put up with it way too easily.
⌊that is wrong, but⌋you do it eagerly!
-or-
you ⌊wrongly⌋ accept it wholeheartedly!
-or-
And you ⌊change your mind and⌋ accept these differences/changes! ⌊That is wrong!⌋
© 2016 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
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