complete verse (John 6:63)

Following are a number of back-translations of John 6:63:

  • Ojitlán Chinantec: “People live because their spirit is in them. A person’s flesh is worthless if the spirit is absent from the body. Those words that I told you give eternal life, the way a person’s spirit gives him natural life.”
  • Huehuetla Tepehua: “Well, the Holy Spirit, he is the one who gives eternal life. The life of just men can’t give life everlasting up in heaven. The words that I declare unto you are for your heart, and they give life everlasting.”
  • Chol: “That which is for our spirits gives us our lives. That which is for our body does not give us that. My words that I told you are for your spirit. They give you your life.” (Source for this and above: M. Larson / B. Moore in Notes on Translation February 1970, p. 1-125.)
  • Uma: “It is the Spirit of God who gives life. The power/authority of man is useless. The words which I spoke to you come from the Spirit of God and give life.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “I tell you,’ said Isa, ‘it is God’s Spirit hep that causes us (incl.) to live. As for the power/strength of mankind there is no use (in it), it cannot make mankind alive. What I have taught to you causes life because this comes out from the Spirit of God.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “The only one who can give life forever is the Holy Spirit. There is nothing that a body alone can do. The words which I said to you come from the Holy Spirit, and they can give life forver.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “The one who gives life, it is God’s Spirit, not the body. The body is of no use there. As for what I have been saying to you, they are from God’s Spirit, so exactly that is what gives life, provided you believe.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “These things that I am teaching, what they all come down to is (lit. there’s no other returning-place than) things concerning the spirit and life which is without ending. It’s true, the things referred to (lit. being caused to be hit) in this teaching of mine, those are from where this life can be gotten. It can’t be gotten from flesh which is eaten.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
  • Tenango Otomi: “Only the Holy Spirit gives the new life. That which I told you means that you should believe in me, not that I was saying that you should eat me.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)

Spirit (of God) (Japanese honorifics)

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight.

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 to do this is through the usage (or a lack) of an honorific prefix as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. When the referent is God, the “divine” honorific prefix mi- (御 or み) can be used, as in mi-tama (御霊) or “Spirit (of God)” in the referenced verses.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

See also Holy Spirit

1st person pronoun referring to God (Japanese)

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight.

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 first person singular and plural pronoun (“I” and “we” and its various forms) as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. The most commonly used watashi/watakushi (私) is typically used when the speaker is humble and asking for help. In these verses, where God / Jesus is referring to himself, watashi is also used but instead of the kanji writing system (私) the syllabary hiragana (わたし) is used to distinguish God from others.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

See also pronoun for “God”.

formal 2nd person plural pronoun (Japanese)

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight.

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. )

formal pronoun: Jesus addressing his disciples and common people

Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.

As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator 2002, p. 210ff. ), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.

Here, Jesus is addressing his disciples, individuals and/or crowds with the formal pronoun, showing respect.

In most Dutch translations, Jesus addresses his disciples and common people with the informal pronoun, whereas they address him with the formal form.

Translation commentary on John 6:63

God’s Spirit is literally “the spirit.” However, where “spirit” is unmarked (that is, without attributive) in the New Testament, it normally refers to God’s Spirit, as in the present context. It is strange that some translations spell Spirit with a lower case “s” (New English Bible, Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible). God’s Spirit frequently appears as the source of life in both the Old and New Testaments. This concept is given particular emphasis in the Gospel of John. For example, it is God’s Spirit which brings about the new birth (3.5,8), and the Spirit is life-giving water (7.38-39). It may be necessary in some languages to invert the clause What gives life is God’s Spirit and render it “God’s Spirit is the one who causes people to live.”

Man’s power is literally “the flesh,” as in most translations. In the Old Testament “flesh” is often used as a description of mortal man in contrast with God, who is life-giving Spirit. That is clearly the meaning in the present context, and Good News Translation makes this meaning explicit. Man’s power is of no use at all may be rendered “people themselves cannot do this.” It may be necessary to be even more explicit, for example, “people themselves cannot cause people to live.”

The pronoun I is emphatic in the second sentence of this verse.

Bring God’s life-giving Spirit is literally “are Spirit and are life.” It is rendered “are Spirit and life” or similarly in most translations, though some have “spirit” with lower case “s.” Phillips renders Spirit as “spiritual,” but it is difficult to see the reasoning behind this rendering. But it is also difficult to see meaning in the literal rendering “are Spirit and are life,” since “and” normally indicates a relation of balance between the things it connects. In this case, however, “and” may simply be used to indicate an unmarked relation between “Spirit” and “life,” and so the phrase may be rendered “Spirit that gives life” or life-giving Spirit. Such an exegesis is in keeping with John’s theology and also with his Semitic Greek style, since in the Old Testament terms which are not in a balanced relation are often joined by the connective “and.” This exegesis also fits the overall context of the discourse on the bread of life, in which there is an implicit contrast between Jesus and Moses. Compare 2 Corinthians 3.6, “The written law brings death, but the Spirit gives life.”

A literal translation of bring God’s life-giving Spirit could be misleading, since it might imply that the words themselves carry the Spirit. One may say in some languages “the words I have spoken to you cause you to have God’s Spirit, which gives life” or “… causes you to live.” However, it may be difficult to speak of “words causing the Spirit to come.” Therefore one may say “By means of the words which I have spoken to you, I have caused God’s life-giving Spirit to come to you.”

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 .