at early dawn

The Greek in Luke 2:41 that is translated as “at early dawn” or similar in English is translated in the German New Testament translation by Berger / Nord (publ. 1999) idiomatically and lyrically with in aller Herrgottsfrühe or “at the crack of dawn” (verbatim: “at the Lord God’s early morning”).

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 .

complete verse (Luke 2:41)

Following are a number of back-translations of Luke 2:41:

  • Noongar: “Spring came, so Jesus’ father and mother always went to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival.” (Source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
  • Uma: “Every year, Yesus’ mother and father went to Yerusalem to attend the big day of the Yahudi people called Paskah Day.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
  • Yakan: “Every year the parents of Isa went to Awrusalam at the time of the festival for remembering the passing-by of God.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
  • Western Bukidnon Manobo: “And every year the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem to attend the feast which was called ‘Passing By.'” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
  • Kankanaey: “When Jesus was twelve years old, he went-with his parents (lit. plural father) to go to Jerusalem, because it was their yearly custom to go attend-the-fiesta at the fiesta called Passed-By.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
  • Tagbanwa: “Every year, at each Fiesta of Passed-by, the parents of Jesus would go to Jerusalem.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)

Jerusalem

The name that is transliterated as “Jerusalem” in English is signed in French Sign Language with a sign that depicts worshiping at the Western Wall in Jerusalem:


“Jerusalem” in French Sign Language (source: La Bible en langue des signes française )

While a similar sign is also used in British Sign Language, another, more neutral sign that combines the sign “J” and the signs for “place” is used as well. (Source: Anna Smith)


“Jerusalem” in British Sign Language (source: Christian BSL, used with permission)

Learn more on Bible Odyssey: Jerusalem .

Scriptures Plain & Simple (Luke 2:41-52)

Barclay Newman, a translator on the teams for both the Good News Bible and the Contemporary English Version, translated passages of the New Testament into English and published them in 2014, “in a publication brief enough to be non-threatening, yet long enough to be taken seriously, and interesting enough to appeal to believers and un-believers alike.” The following is the translation of Luke 2:41-52:

Every year Mary and Joseph went to Jerusalem for Passover,
       and when Jesus was twelve, they went there as usual.
After Passover, his parents left,
       not knowing Jesus had stayed on in the city.

They thought he was traveling with friends,
       and they went a whole day before looking for him.

When they could not find Jesus with relatives or friends,
they returned to Jerusalem and for three days
       anxiously searched everywhere.

Finally, they found Jesus in the temple,
listening to the teachers, asking them questions,
       and surprising everyone by his wisdom and knowledge.

“Son, why have you done this to us?” asked his mother.
       “Your father and I’ve been frantically searching for you.”

“Why did you have to search for me?” questioned Jesus.
“Didn’t you know I’d be here in my Father’s house?”
       But they didn’t understand what he meant.

Jesus returned home to Nazareth with his parents,
       and was always obedient to them.
But his mother never stopped thinking about all of this.

As Jesus grew up, he grew wiser and stronger —
       so much so that God and people were pleased with him.

Translation commentary on Luke 2:41

Exegesis:

kai eporeuonto hoi goneis autou ‘and his parents used to go.’ The imperfect tense suggests customary action.

kat’ etos ‘every year’; kata is used here distributively.

tē heortē tou pascha ‘at (the occasion of) the feast of Passover’; the dative tē heortē is temporal.

heortē ‘religious feast,’ ‘festival.’

pascha ‘the Passover,’ transliteration of the Aramaic pasha’ (Hebrew pesach). Here the word is used in a broader sense, including the feast of the unleavened bread, taking place the subsequent days.

Translation:

Now, cf. on 1.57.

Went, cf. on 1.39. The verb used here can refer to travel in any direction and on any occasion; it is more generic than the one used in v. 42.

At the feast of the Passover, or, ‘when it was the feast of Passover,’ ‘at the time people had-the-feast Pascha (cf. Batak Toba), or, celebrated the Passover.’ In some cases “feast” is simply rendered ‘day,’ the following name being enough to mark it as a festival (Toraja-Sa’dan). — Passover. The term is often transliterated (as is also the case in Greek), but preferably translated (as done in English), cf. ‘the having passed over delivered remember day’ (Ekari), ‘celebrating that (in former days) the Lord (rather than ‘the angels,’ cf. Ex. 11.4f; 12.12, 23, 27) passed by (or, spared) the first-born sons (of Israel).’ When in case of transliteration the resulting form is primarily known as the name of the Christian festival of the resurrection its use here may have its drawbacks; if in case of translation a phrase or term is employed that explicitly refers to the resurrection, its use here would mean a reversal of the historical development, which is not to be recommended.

Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.

SIL Translator’s Notes on Luke 2:41

Section 2:41–52

The boy Jesus spoke with the teachers

In this section, Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the Feast of the Passover in Jerusalem. This may have been Jesus’ first time to go there for Passover. While Jesus was in Jerusalem, he went to the Temple and discussed religious matters with Jewish religious leaders.

When Joseph and Mary left Jerusalem to return to Nazareth, they traveled with a group of people. They did not realize that Jesus had stayed in Jerusalem and was not traveling with them. This may have happened because of the way Jews normally walked in smaller groups when they traveled together. The women and small children walked ahead since they traveled more slowly. A boy normally traveled with his mother. But when he became a man, perhaps as early as twelve years old, he traveled with his father. So, as they returned from Jerusalem, Mary probably thought that Jesus was with Joseph, and Joseph may have thought that he was with Mary. Joseph and Mary traveled for a whole day before they realized that Jesus was not with them. The events in this section show three things:

(a) Joseph and Mary did not know where Jesus was;

(b) they did not know exactly what he was telling them when they found him;

(c) by the age of twelve (or before), Jesus was aware that he was God’s Son.

Some other possible headings for this section are:

Mary and Joseph Find Jesus With the Teachers in the Temple Courtyard (God’s Word)
-or-
Jesus when he was twelve years old

Paragraph 2:41–48

2:41

His parents: The phrase His parents refers to Joseph and Mary. Although Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father, he filled the responsibility of a father toward Jesus.

the Feast of the Passover: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as Passover means “pass by” or “pass over.” The Feast of the Passover was one of the Jewish religious festivals. The Jews celebrated this festival every year.

During this festival, the Jews celebrated the time when God freed their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. It reminded them of how the angel of the Lord caused the Egyptian king to allow the Israelites to leave Egypt. The angel did this by killing every firstborn son of the Egyptians during one night. However, the angel did not kill any of the firstborn sons of the Israelites. Instead, he spared their lives. He “passed over” the oldest sons of the Israelites (Exodus 12:21–27). Because of this, the Feast of the Passover was like an independence celebration for the Jews.

Some ways to translate the phrase Feast of the Passover are:

Translate the meaning of the term. For example:

the Passing Over/By Feast
-or-
the Sparing ⌊of the Firstborn Sons⌋ festival
-or-
“Death did not harm us” feast

Focus on the result of the angel “passing over,” in other words, the Jews becoming free. For example:

the Festival of Freedom
-or-
Deliverance Day Feast
-or-
the End of Slavery Celebration

You may want to include a footnote and cross-reference here about this feast. For example:

The Feast of Passover was a festival that reminded the Jews of the time when God freed their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. See Exodus 12:1–27.

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