It is the Lord

Batik dye artwork by Hanna-Cheriyan Varghese, used with permission by the Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC) at Princeton Theological Seminary. You can purchase this and many other artworks by artists in residence at the OSMC in high resolution and without a watermark via the OSMC website .

“Hanna-Cheriyan Varghese (1938 – 2009) of Selangor, Malaysia, was the artist in residence at OMSC for the 2006–2007 academic year. She was born to Christian parents, and she remembered her mother taking her to a different worship service every week: ‘My parents encouraged me to attend different churches so that my siblings and I would appreciate the liturgy and traditions of the Christian believers of different denominations. Christians are a minority in Malaysia so we continue to struggle for our identity in a Muslim society. There is no open conflict as such.’

“She always had a passion for painting and drawing. She worked in the mediums of acrylic paint and Batik dye, the latter medium being an ancient decorative craft that has come into use as a high art medium in the last 50 or 60 years. A Batik image is created as a pattern or picture dyed in fabric. Certain parts of the fabric are covered with a wax, which acts as a “resist” to the colorful dyes. Hanna Varghese mastered the medium, and the sacred art images she created with it are original, bold and graphic.

“‘All creative work, be it the spoken word, the written word or the sung word, are essentials in praise and worship, meditation, education, inculturation and evangelism. This also includes art and pictures, which is universal seeing.’ Hanna Varghese.” (Source )

John as a first-person evangelist (John 21:9)

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: “And when we arrived at the shore, we got out of the boat, and we saw a fire of coals . . .”

complete verse (John 21:9)

Following are a number of back-translations of John 21:9:

  • Uma: “When they came down at the shore, they saw there was a fire that had been lighted there with glowing coals, and on the fire there was fish and there was also bread.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “When they got out at the shore, they saw fish roasting on embers and there was also bread.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And when they had come ashore they saw a charcoal fire, and there was there fish and bread being toasted.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “When they got-out-of the boat, they saw fish being-roasted on glowing coals. There was also bread.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “When they came ashore there at the edge, they looked and there was a fire which had fish already roasting and there were a few units of bread set down.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “When they arrived at the shore, there was a fire burning there. Some fish were on it to cook. Also there was bread.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)

Sung version of John 21

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®).

For more information, see here .

Translation commentary on John 21:9

Charcoal fire is the same word used in 18.18; it occurs nowhere else in the New Testament.

The word used for fish is the same word used in 6.9,11. Although in Chapter 6 the word seems to have the meaning “dried fish” or “pickled fish,” in this and the following verse the reference is evidently to the fresh fish which had just been caught. The English word fish may be either singular or plural when applied to food, but the Greek text uses a singular here (New American Bible “a fish”). It is possible to understand the Greek text to mean that both the fish and bread were on the fire, but most translations indicate that only the fish were being cooked.

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 .