sacrifice

The Greek that is translated as “sacrifice” in English is translated in Huba as hatǝmachi or “shoot misfortune.”

David Frank (in this blog post ) explains: “How is it that ‘shoot misfortune’ comes to mean sacrifice, I wanted to know? Here is the story: It is a traditional term. Whenever there were persistent problems such as a drought, or a rash of sickness or death, the king (or his religious advisor) would set aside a day and call on everyone to prepare food, such as the traditional mash made from sorghum, or perhaps even goat. The food had to be put together outside. The king or his religious advisor would give an address stating what the problem was and what they were doing about it. Then an elder representing the people would take a handful of that food and throw it, probably repeating that action several times, until it was considered to be enough to atone for all the misfortune they had been having. With this action he was ‘shooting (or casting off) misfortune’ to restore well-being to his people. As he threw the food, he would say that this is to remove the misfortune that had fallen on his people, and everybody would respond by saying aɗǝmja, ‘let it be so.’ People could eat some of this food, but they could not bring the food into their houses, because that would mean that they were bringing misfortune into their house. There is still a minority of people in this linguistic and cultural group that practices the traditional religion, but the shooting of misfortune is no longer practiced, and the term ‘shoot misfortune’ is used now in Bible translation to refer to offering a sacrifice. Aɗǝmja is how they translate ‘amen.'”

complete verse (Acts 14:18)

Following are a number of back-translations of Acts 14:18:

  • Uma: “Even though thus were Paulus and Barnabas’s words to the people, it was still very hard to restrain them from bringing their worship-offerings to them.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “The words of Paul and company were like those, but they almost could not restrain the people so that they would not sacrifice to them.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “But in spite of the fact that these were the words of Paul and company, they could scarcely scold the people and stop them from worshipping them.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “But even though he said that, they almost continued to sacrifice-to-them.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “Although Pablo-and-companion explained everything in what they said, they really had a hard time preventing those people who wanted to worship them with a sacrifice. But, when they had been telling them to stop for a long time already, they did manage to prevent them.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)

Translation commentary on Acts 14:18

Even with these words may be understood either as indicating means, “by saying these things,” or concession, “even though they said these things.” Most translators prefer the latter alternative. The relationship of the phrase with these words to the rest of the clause is not easy to express in some languages. It may even be necessary to say “the apostles spoke these words but they found it difficult to prevent the crowds….”

The semantic structure of hardly keep the crowds from offering is rather complex. In some languages the equivalent is “only by trying very hard did the apostles prevent the crowds from offering” or “the apostles caused the crowds not to offer a sacrifice to them, but it was not easy for the apostles to prevent them from doing so.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Acts of the Apostles. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1972. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .