καὶ ἀρχαίου κόσμου οὐκ ἐφείσατο ἀλλ᾽ ὄγδοον Νῶε δικαιοσύνης κήρυκα ἐφύλαξεν κατακλυσμὸν κόσμῳ ἀσεβῶν ἐπάξας
5and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly;
The Hebrew and Greek that is translated as “world” in English is translated in Mandarin Chinese with shìjiè (世界). While shìjiè is now the commonly used term for “world” in Chinese, it was popularized as such by Chinese Bible translations. (Source: Mak 2017, p. 241ff.)
See also world in the Gospel and 1 John.
The Hebrew, Ge’ez, Latin, and Greek that is translated as “flood” in English is translated in the German Luther Bible as Sintflut and the influential Dutch Bibles Statenvertaling and Nieuwe Vertaling as zondvloed. Both terms originally mean “great / permanent flood” but have folk-etymologically been reinterpreted as “sin flood” (“sin” in Dutch is zonde and in German Sünde).
Today these terms are used in either language figuratively as well (“a lot of water” or “a lot”). (Source: Jost Zetzsche)
See also Translation commentary on Genesis 6:17.
The Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Latin that is translated as a form of “save” in English is translated in Shipibo-Conibo with a phrase that means literally “make to live,” which combines the meaning of “to rescue” and “to deliver from danger,” but also the concept of “to heal” or “restore to health.”
Other translations include:
See also salvation and save (Japanese honorifics).
The name that is transliterated in English as “Noah” means “rest,” “comfort,” “comforter.” (Source: Cornwall / Smith 1997 )
It is translated in Spanish Sign Language with a sign that combines the letter N + “boat.” (Source: Steve Parkhurst)
“Noah” in Spanish Sign Language, source: Sociedad Bíblica de España
For more information on translations of proper names with sign language see Sign Language Bible Translations Have Something to Say to Hearing Christians .
The following is a stained glass window depicting Noah by Endre Odon Hevezi and Gyula Bajo from 1965 for the Debre Libanos Monastery, Oromia, Ethiopia:
Photo by Timothy A. Gonsalves, hosted by Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license
Stained glass is not just highly decorative, it’s a medium which has been used to express important religious messages for centuries. Literacy was not widespread in the medieval and Renaissance periods and the Church used stained glass and other artworks to teach the central beliefs of Christianity. In Gothic churches, the windows were filled with extensive narrative scenes in stained glass — like huge and colorful picture storybooks — in which worshipers could ‘read’ the stories of Christ and the saints and learn what was required for their religious salvation. (Source: Victoria and Albert Museum )
Learn more on Bible Odyssey: Noah .
Following are a number of back-translations of 2 Peter 2:5:
Following is a list of (back-) translations of various languages:
Those who approach the New Testament solely through English translations face a serious linguistic obstacle to apprehending what these writings say about justice. In most English translations, the word “justice” occurs relatively infrequently. It is no surprise, then, that most English-speaking people think the New Testament does not say much about justice; the Bibles they read do not say much about justice. English translations are in this way different from translations into Latin, French, Spanish, German, Dutch — and for all I know, most languages.
The basic issue is well known among translators and commentators. Plato’s Republic, as we all know, is about justice. The Greek noun in Plato’s text that is standardly translated as “justice” is dikaiosunē (δικαιοσύνη); the adjective standardly translated as “just” is dikaios (δίκαιος). This same dik-stem occurs around three hundred times in the New Testament, in a wide variety of grammatical variants.
To the person who comes to English translations of the New Testament fresh from reading and translating classical Greek, it comes as a surprise to discover that though some of those occurrences are translated with grammatical variants on our word “just,” the great bulk of dik-stem words are translated with grammatical variants on our word “right.” The noun, for example, is usually translated as “righteousness,” not as “justice.” In English we have the word “just” and its grammatical variants coming horn the Latin iustitia, and the word “right” and its grammatical variants coining from the Old English recht. Almost all our translators have decided to translate the great bulk of dik-stem words in the New Testament with grammatical variants on the latter — just the opposite of the decision made by most translators of classical Greek.
I will give just two examples of the point. The fourth of the beatitudes of Jesus, as recorded in the fifth chapter of Matthew, reads, in the New Revised Standard Version, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” The word translated as “righteousness” is dikaiosunē. And the eighth beatitude, in the same translation, reads “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The Greek word translated as “righteousness” is dikaiosunē. Apparently, the translators were not struck by the oddity of someone being persecuted because he is righteous. My own reading of human affairs is that righteous people are either admired or ignored, not persecuted; people who pursue justice are the ones who get in trouble.
It goes almost without saying that the meaning and connotations of “righteousness” are very different in present-day idiomatic English from those of “justice.” “Righteousness” names primarily if not exclusively a certain trait of personal character. (…) The word in present-day idiomatic English carries a negative connotation. In everyday speech one seldom any more describes someone as righteous; if one does, the suggestion is that he is self-righteous. “Justice,” by contrast, refers to an interpersonal situation; justice is present when persons are related to each other in a certain way. There is, indeed, a long tradition of philosophical and theological discussion on the virtue of justice. But that use of the term has almost dropped out of idiomatic English; we do not often speak any more of a person as just. And in any case, the concept of the virtue of justice presupposes the concept of those social relationships that are just.
So when the New Testament writers speak of dikaiosunē, are they speaking of righteousness or of justice? Is Jesus blessing those who hunger and thirst for righteousness or those who hunger and thirst for justice?
A thought that comes to mind is that the word changed meaning between Plato and the New Testament. Had Jesus’ words been uttered in Plato’s time and place, they would have been understood as blessing those who hunger and thirst for the social condition of justice. In Jesus’ time and place, they would have been understood as blessing (hose who hunger and thirst for righteousness — that is, for personal moral rectitude.
Between the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament there came the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. (…) One of the challenges facing the Septuagint translators was how to catch, in the Greek of their day, the combination of mishpat (מִשְׁפָּט) with tsedeq (צֶ֫דֶק). Tsedeq that we find so often in the Old Testament, standardly translated into English as justice and righteousness. The solution they settled on was to translate tsedeq as dikaiosunē, and to use a term whose home use was in legal situations, namely, krisis (κρίσις), to translate mishpat. Mishpat and tsedeq became krisis and dikaiosunē. For the most part, this is also how they translated the Hebrew words even when they were not explicitly paired with each other: mishpat (justice) becomes krisis, tsedeq (righteousness) becomes dikaiosunē. The pattern is not entirely consistent, however; every now and then, when mishpat is not paired off with tsedeq, it is translated with dikaiosunē or some other dik-stem word (e.g., 1 Kings 3:28, Proverbs 17:23, Isaiah 61:8).
I think the conclusion that those of us who are not specialists in Hellenistic Greek should draw from this somewhat bewildering array of data is that, in the linguistic circles of the New Testament writers, dikaiosunē did not refer definitively either to the character trait of righteousness (shorn of its negative connotations) or to the social condition of justice, but was ambiguous as between those two. If dikaiosunē had referred decisively in Hellenistic Greek to righteousness rather than to justice, why would the Septuagint translators sometimes use it to translate mishpat, why would Catholic translators [into the 1980s] usually translate it as “justice,” and why would all English translators sometimes translate it as “justice”? (All earlier Latin-based Catholic translations, the New American Bible and the Jerusalem Bible, both of which appeared in the early 1970s have most occurrences of dik-stem words translated with variants on “just.” In subsequent revisions of the New American Bible, and in the New Jerusalem Bible, these translations have been altered to translations along the lines of righteousness. Other translations that use a form of justice or “doing right / rightness” include the British New English Bible [1970] and Revised English Bible [1989] and some newer translations such as by Hart [2017], Ruden [2021] or McKnight [2023]).
Conversely, if it referred decisively to justice, why would the Septuagint translators usually not use it to translate mishpat, and why would almost all translators sometimes translate it as “righteousness”? Context will have to determine whether, in a given case, it is best translated as “justice” or as “righteousness” — or as something else instead; and if context does not determine, then it would be best, if possible, to preserve the ambiguity and use some such ambiguous expression as “what is right” or “the right thing.”
Let me make one final observation about translation. When one takes in hand a list of all the occurrences of dik-stem words in the Greek New Testament, and then opens up almost any English translation of the New Testament and reads in one sitting all the translations of these words, a certain pattern emerges: unless the notion of legal judgment is so prominent in the context as virtually to force a translation in terms of justice, the translators will prefer to speak of righteousness.
See also respectable, righteous, righteous (person), devout, and She is more in the right(eous) than I.
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 usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme are (され) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, hogos-are-ru (保護される) or “protect” is used.
(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )
Instead of the account of the murmurings of the Israelites in Egypt, which is found in Jude, Peter substitutes the story of the Flood, perhaps for the following reasons:
1. In various writings of that time, the Flood was closely connected with the fallen angels; in fact the flood was supposed to have been punishment that resulted from the activity of the fallen angels and their offspring.
2. It is likely that this choice was influenced by 1 Peter (see 3.20).
3. The Flood story has overtones of the last judgment, since it reminds people of the end of the world.
4. Finally, the Flood account serves as a good example of God’s act of punishing sinners and rewarding the righteous, and is therefore appropriate to 2 Peter.
The world denotes not only the world of human beings but also the universe as a whole. The Flood is understood to have a universal scope and thus is an appropriate reminder of the coming judgment that will also affect the whole world. However, for practical purposes in languages that do not have words or expressions that can refer to both the world of humans and the universe at the same time, translators should use a word that applies to the “world” of humans (world of the ungodly in the final sentence). The world before the flood is characterized as ancient. Peter seems to divide history into three stages: the ancient world, the present world, and the new world that will come about as a result of the day of the Lord. Ancient may be rendered as “a long time ago” or “many generations ago.”
The world of the ungodly means the same as the ancient world and echoes Gen 6.5-7, 12-13. The word for ungodly is used in other parts of this letter and is a favorite word also in (see Jude 4 and the discussion there). In Jewish tradition the people who lived at the time of the flood committed the same sins as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Ungodly may also be expressed as “people who disobey God,” “people who do not worship God,” “people who have no use for God,” or “people who are not faithful to God.”
Noah, however, was saved from the Flood. In the Genesis account Noah is described as a good man with no faults (Gen 6.9-10; 7.1). He is held up by Jewish tradition as an example of moral excellence. Noah then stands for those faithful Christians who will be saved from the judgment that is coming.
Noah is described as a herald of righteousness (Good News Translation “who preached righteousness”). While the Old Testament does not contain any account of Noah as a preacher, there are many references in Jewish (and Christian) tradition regarding his preaching to the people of the Flood generation. For example, the Jewish historian Josephus writes that Noah was “displeased” at the behavior of the people and tried to persuade them “to change their dispositions and their acts for the better”. In another publication known as “The Sibylline Oracles,” a long sermon of Noah is recorded. Righteousness here is an ethical term, with the meaning of upright moral behavior, or in its wider sense, living according to God’s will and purpose. A herald of righteousness will need to be radically restructured in many languages; for example, “who proclaimed (taught, announced, said) that people should live good lives according to God’s will and purpose.”
The word for preserved can also be “saved,” “protected,” “kept safe,” or even “protected from death.” In addition to Noah, the seven others saved were his wife, his three sons, and their wives (Gen 8.18). It is worth noting that the Greek is literally “Noah the eighth person,” which is an idiomatic way of saying “Noah with seven other people.” At any rate, the number of people saved in the Flood is eight, and many commentaries find this number significant. It is noted, for instance, that the eighth day is associated with the new creation, since the old creation was accomplished in seven days. Christians have associated the eighth day with Jesus’ resurrection, which in turn is linked with the new creation. It is not certain, however, whether Peter had all of this in mind, although it should be noted that the number eight also appears in relation to Noah and the flood in 1 Peter 3.20. What is important for the translator is that, if the number eight is regarded as significant, then it should at least be retained in the translation; for example, “but protected the eighth person Noah, who preached righteousness, and seven other people from death, when he brought…,” or “but protected Noah and seven other people from death, when he brought … Noah, who was the eighth person, preached that people should live good lives following the will and purpose of God,” or even “but protected Noah the eighth person, who was the one who preached that people … He and seven others did not drown when God caused the Flood to cover the world of people who did not worship him.”
One other thing needs to be noted. Revised Standard Version follows the ordering of the Greek text. It is clear, however, from the grammar of the text that the note about Noah is an embedded clause, and that when he brought … connects directly with the ancient world. Good News Translation has restructured the verse so that the embedded clause is put at the end of the verse. In many languages a similar restructuring needs to be done in order to ensure that the translation is clear and conforms to the rules of naturalness in these languages. The clause when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly can be restructured as “when he caused a flood to cover the world where people who disobeyed him lived” or “when he caused water to entirely cover the world where people who disobeyed him lived.”
Quoted with permission from Arichea, Daniel C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Second Letter from Peter. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
No comments yet.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.