The Seventh Commandment (image)

Painting by Wang Suda 王肅達 (1910-1963),
Copyright by the Catholic University Peking, China

Text under painting translated from Literary Chinese into English:
The Seventh Commandment
The holy woman washes the Lord, a wicked disciple chastises her

Image taken from Chinese Christian Posters . For more information on the “Ars Sacra Pekinensis” school of art, see this article , for other artworks of that school in TIPs, see here.

Passover

The Hebrew and Greek pesach/pascha that is typically translated in English as “Passover” (see below) is translated in a variety of descriptive ways of various aspects of the Jewish festival. (Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight):

  • Ojitlán Chinantec: “the feast of the passing by of God’s angel”
  • Lalana Chinantec: “the day would come which is called Passover, when the Israel people remember how they went out of the land of Egypt”
  • Huehuetla Tepehua: “the celebration when they ate their sheep”
  • Umiray Dumaget Agta: “the celebration of the day of their being brought out of bondage”
    (source for this and above: M. Larson / B. Moore in Notes on Translation February 1970, p. 1-125.)
  • Obolo: ijọk Iraraka — “Festival of Passing” (source: Enene Enene)
  • Guhu-Samane: “special day of sparing” (source: Ernest Richert in The Bible Translator 1965, p. 198ff. )
  • Yakan: “The festival of the Isra’il tribe which they call For-Remembering” (source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Wolof: “Festival of the day of Salvation” (“the term ‘pass over’ brings up the image of a person’s crossing over a chasm after death”) (source: Marilyn Escher)
  • Bura-Pabir: vir kucelir fəlɓəla kəi — “time-of happiness-of jumping-over house”
  • Berom: Nzem Gyilsit Nelɔ — “Festival-of jumping-of houses”
  • Nigerian Fulfulde: Humto Ƴaɓɓitaaki / Humto Sakkinki — “Festival-of passing-over”
  • Hausa: Bikin Ƙetarewa — “Festival-of going-over” (source for this and three above: Andy Warren-Rothlin)
  • Jula: “Feast of end of slavery” (source: Fritz Goerling)
  • Bafanji: laiŋzieʼ — “pass-jump over” (source: Cameron Hamm)
  • Tiéyaxo Bozo / Jenaama Bozo: “Salvation/Rescue (religious) feast” (source: Marko Hakkola)
  • Sabaot: Saakweetaab Keeytaayeet — “Festival of Passing-by” (source: Iver Larsen)
  • Language spoken in India and Bangladesh: “Festival of avoidance”
  • Vlax Romani: o ghes o baro le Nakhimasko — “the Day of the Passing”
  • Saint Lucian Creole: Fèt Délivwans — “Feast of Deliverance” (source: David Frank)
  • Finnish: pääsiäinen (“The term is very probably coined during the NT translation process around 1520-1530. It is connected to a multivalent verb päästä and as such refers either to the Exodus (päästä meaning “to get away [from Egypt]”) or to the end of the Lent [päästä referring to get relieved from the limitations in diet]. The later explanation being far more probable than the first.”)
  • Northern Sami: beas’sážat (“Coined following the model in Finnish. The Sami verb is beassat and behaves partly like the Finnish one. Many Christian key terms are either borrowed from Finnish or coined following the Finnish example.”)
  • Estonian: ülestõusmispüha — “holiday/Sunday of the resurrection” — or lihavõttepüha — “holiday/Sunday of returning of meat”
  • Karelian: äijüpäivü — “the great day” (“Here one can hear the influence of the Eastern Christianity, but not directly Russian as language, because the Russian term is Пасха/Pasha or Воскресение Христово/Voskresenie Hristovo, ‘[the day of] the resurrection of Christ,’ but the week before Easter is called as the great week.”) (Source for this and three above: Seppo Sipilä)
  • Russian (for Russian speaking Muslims): праздник Освобождения/prazdnik Osvobozhdeniya — “Festival of-liberation” (source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)
  • Kono: laaŋumɛ̃ɛ̃ or “skip over the person” (provisional term). Alesha Hagemeyer explains in this blog post that laaŋumɛ̃ɛ̃ is a play on the term laaɲámɛ̃ɛ̃ or “to skip over the water” which is traditionally used for the sacrifice of a sheep or a goat after the death of a family member. That term literally means “to skip over the water” so that “their loved one will pass over the water and enter the presence of God”
  • Chagatai (a precursor language of both Uzbek and Uighur): faṭīr, derived from the Arabic word fiṭr for the holiday celebrated by Muslims after fasting in Ramadan (ʿĪd al-Fiṭr / عيد الفطر) (source: F. Erbay and F.N. Küçükballı in Acta Theologica 2025 45/2, p. 133ff. )
  • Low German: Osterfest “Easter” (translation by Johannes Jessen, publ. 1933, republ. 2006)
  • Spanish Sign Language: pass through + miracle (source: John Elwode in The Bible Translator 2008, p. 78ff. )


    “Passover” in Spanish Sign Language, source: Sociedad Bíblica de España

  • English: Passover (term coined by William Tyndale that both replicates the sound of the Hebrew original pesah — פסח as well as part of the meaning: “passing over” the houses of the Israelites in Egypt) — oddly, the English Authorized Version (King James Version) translates the occurrence in Acts 12:4 as Easter

Many Romance languages follow the tradition from Latin that has one term for both “Easter” and “Passover” (pascha). Portuguese uses Páscoa for both, Italian uses Pascha, and French has Pâque for “Passover” and the identically pronounced Pâques for “Easter.”

In languages in francophone and lusophone (Portuguese speaking) Africa, indigenous languages typically use the Romance word for “Easter” as a loanword and often transliterate pesach/pascha. In Kinyarwanda and Rundi Pasika is used, in Swahili and Congo Swahili Pasaka, and in Lingala Pasika. In some cases, the transliteration of “Passover” is derived from the European language, such as Umbundu’s Pascoa (from Portuguese) and Bulu’s Pak (from French). In languages that use Pak or similar for both “Passover” and “Easter” (such as Adioukrou), the identical spelling “serves to reinforce the idea that this is one celebration, not two distinct ones” (source: Hill 2006).

As John Ellingworth (in The Bible Translator 1980, p 445f. ) points out “in most contexts only the presence or absence of the definite article distinguishes them [in French la pâque for Passover and Pâques for Easter]. Since most African languages do not have definite articles, there remains no way to distinguish between the two terms where the general population has borrowed the word for Easter and the Bible translators have borrowed the word for Passover to use in their translation. Some even consider the references to [Passover] before the death of Christ as prophetic!”

See also this devotion on YouVersion .

Learn more on Bible Odyssey: Passover .

raised from the dead

The Greek that is translated as “was raised from the dead” is translated as “rose from the dead” (Xicotepec De Juárez Totonac), “came up again from where he was buried” (Huehuetla Tepehua) or “returned from among the dead” (Ojitlán Chinantec). (Source: M. Larson / B. Moore in Notes on Translation February 1970, p. 1-125.)

In Highland Totonac it is translated with “revivify,” “since a literal translation could simply mean altering the position of a dead body” (source: Hermann Aschmann in The Bible Translator 1950, p. 171ff. ).

See also Lord.

complete verse (John 12:1)

Following are a number of back-translations of John 12:1:

  • Uma: “Six days before Paskah Day, Yesus went to Betania, the town where Lazarus, whom he had made live again, dwelled.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “Six days before the beginning of the Festival For-Remembering, Isa went to Betani, the place of Lasarus the person whom he had made alive from his death.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “Six days from then is the feast of Passover and Jesus arrived there in Bethany, the village of Lazarus, the one Jesus raised from the dead.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “When it lacked six days until the arrival of the fiesta, plural Jesus went to Betania the town of Lazarus the one Jesus had made-alive when he died.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “Just six days before the fiesta which was the Fiesta of Passed-by, Jesus again arrived at Betania, the town of Lazaro whom he had made alive again.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “It was six days before the celebration of the Passover. Jesus went to Bethany where Lazarus lived. It was Lazarus whom Jesus caused to be resurrected after he was entombed.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)

John as a first-person evangelist (John 12:1)

In the Yatzachi Zapotec translation of the Gospel of John, any reference to the evangelist and presumed narrator is done in the first person.

The translator Inez Butler explains (in: Notes on Translation, September 1967, pp. 10ff.):

“In revising the Gospel of John in Yatzachi Zapotec we realized from the start that the third person references of Jesus to himself as Son of Man had to be converted into first person references, but only more recently have we decided that similar change is necessary in John’s references to himself as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’ As I worked on those changes and questioned the informant about his understanding of other passages in the Gospel, I discovered that the reader misses the whole focus of the book as an eyewitness account unless every reference to the disciples indicates the writer’s membership in the group. In view of that we went back through the entire book looking for ways to cue in the reader to the fact that John was an eyewitness and a participant in a many of the events, as well as the historian.

“When the disciples were participants in events along with Jesus, it was necessary to make explicit the fact that they accompanied him, although in the source language that is left implicit, since otherwise our rendering would imply that they were not present.”

In this verse, the Yatzachi Zapotec says: “Six days before the Passover we went with Jesus to Bethany . . .”

Translation commentary on John 12:1

According to the Gospel of John, the Passover began on the next Friday evening (13.1; 18.28; 19.31,42), and so the anointing must have taken place on the Saturday evening preceding.

In many languages “festival” must be added whenever a reference is made to the Passover. The full phrase may be “a festival for celebrating the passing over” or “… the passing over of the angel.”

For the first mention of this Bethany, see 11.1.

The home of Lazarus (so also New English Bible; Goodspeed “where Lazarus … was living”) is literally “where Lazarus was” (many translations). New American Bible translates “the village of Lazarus.” Lazarus is specifically identified as the man he had raised from death. In some languages it is better to treat this clause as a separate sentence, for example, “Jesus had raised this man Lazarus from death” or “… had caused him to live again.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .

SIL Translator’s Notes on John 12:1

Section 12:1–8

Mary anointed Jesus

This section describes what happened at a dinner party in Bethany at the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. Mary anointed (poured perfume/oil on) Jesus’ feet. Judas thought that she wasted something very valuable, but Jesus said that it was for his burial. Here are some other possible titles for this section:

Jesus was anointed in Bethany
-or-
Mary anointed Jesus for his burial

Paragraph 12:1–3

This paragraph tells how Mary anointed Jesus with perfume. She did this to honor him and show that she was devoted to him. Jesus had raised her brother Lazarus to life.

12:1a

Six days before the Passover: This phrase indicates the time of the next event in the narrative. See 11:55a. In some languages it may be natural to translate it as a separate sentence:

It was six days before the Passover feast.
-or-
In six days ⌊the Jews⌋ would celebrate the Passover.

Passover: This is the name of a Jewish festival. It reminds the Jews of the time when they were slaves in Egypt. God went to kill the first-born sons of the Egyptians so that they would allow the Jews to leave Egypt. The term Passover refers to the fact that God passed over (did not enter) the houses of the Jews. That means that he did not harm their sons. See the note at 2:13a for more details.

See how you translated this word in 2:13a, 11:55a, Mark 14:1, and Matthew 26:2.

Jesus came to Bethany: Jesus returned to Bethany, where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived.

Bethany: Bethany is the name of a village near Jerusalem. See how you referred to it in 11:1. In some languages it is natural to say:

the village of Bethany
-or-
the village called Bethany

12:1b

the hometown of Lazarus: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as the hometown of Lazarus is more literally “where Lazarus was.” This phrase reminds the readers of the importance of Bethany, where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. See chapter 11 for more details. This was the village where Lazarus and his sisters lived. Here is another way to translate this phrase:

where Lazarus lived (New Century Version)

whom He had raised from the dead: This clause identifies Lazarus for the readers. He had died, and Jesus had caused him to live again (11:44). In some languages it is more natural to use a separate sentence. For example:

This was the man whom he had raised from the dead.

This is background information. Indicate this in a way that is natural in your language. One way to do that is to place this clause in a separate sentence in parentheses. For example:

(Lazarus is the man Jesus raised from the dead.) (New Century Version)

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