Little Words That Mean A Lot (Part 1 of 0)

Prologue – Part 1

“He who rejects me, and does not receive my words, has that which judges him — the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day” (John 12:48, NKJV).

The fact that the “words” that we speak will judge us “in the last day” is surely a frightening thought. There is great power in the words that we utter, for we know that “out of the same mouth come praise and cursing” (James 3:10, NKJV). Counter to this fearful admonition is the comforting thought that proper use of our words can be spiritually uplifting: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver” (Prov. 25:11, NKJV). Words provide the path for us to learn the Truth and set us on the way to salvation. On the other hand, words spoken in ignorance of God’s way, or in hateful anger, can lead us down the “broad road that leads to destruction”. Every time we speak there can be huge consequences; a few little words that we utter can commend or condemn us!

That we must be extremely careful about our use of language is surely more or less apparent to every one of us. It is equally unmistakable that our ultimate salvation is tied up in the utterances that come out of our mouths: “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man” (Matt. 15:11, NKJV).

But what is not so obvious is: In what language are we to define the meaning of our words? Is the Bible strictly talking about only the original text languages? Does the Bible mean that only those who can read and comprehend ancient Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic can truly understand what God intends for us to express? There are many who think that this is the case. I once got into a debate with a clergyman who insisted that only one who had studied ancient Biblical languages was qualified to interpret and teach Scripture. He felt it was beneath his dignity to carry the debate any further when he starting losing his ground based on my quotations from the King James Bible.

Some in our own community rely heavily on interpreting their views based on their studies from Biblical concordances such as Strong’s or Young’s. While these are certainly powerful aids to help us more fully comprehend the word of God, surely we must also realize that a period of some 1800 years had passed from the age of the apostles till Strong’s. Nevertheless, while early believers did not have this resource they still needed to choose their speech and base their understand­ing of the Word of God in accordance with the Scriptures.

The Reformation made the Scriptures readily available in the vernacular. There can be no doubt that the King James Bible (also commonly known as the Authorized Version) had a profound effect on spreading the Word of God to the common people further and wider than ever before. It has often been said that the KJV is the only book written by a committee that has made sense! However, it is also no secret that the English language has changed immensely since the KJV was first issued in 1611. I personally don’t know anyone who speaks English the way it is written in the KJV. Modern English has become the most expressive and most complex language in the world — and also the one language almost uniformly spoken and understood by educated people throughout the world. The complexity of the English language and its diversity is amply demonstrated by noting the following quotation:

The statistics of English are astonishing. Of all the world’s languages (which now number some 2,700), it is arguably the richest in vocabulary. The compendious Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000 words; and a further half-million technical and scientific terms remain uncatalogued. According to traditional estimates, neighboring German has a vocabulary of about 185,000 and French fewer than 100,000, including such Franglais as le snacque-barre and le hit-parade.1

This poses the question: if a few little words can condemn, or commend us, how do we really define words so we know exactly what they mean? A corollary to this question must be evident from the quote above, namely that words don’t always map one to one in translating from one language to another. How then do we make sure that we are truly understanding and expressing correct thoughts? Let us consider some of the issues that are involved in exactly defining the meaning of a word:

  • Language is not a static thing. The meaning of a word can evolve and can connote something very different today from what it meant in 1611. In short, the meaning of a word can change with time.
  • A word might still exist in a scholarly dictionary, but become archaic. Hence its meaning is no longer understood by most people.
  • The word(s) used to describe something may be very different, even in the same language, depending on local idiom. In short, the same word might define something very different in Vancouver than it does in Ann Arbor.
  • As we have alluded to previously: in translating from one language to another it may be extremely difficult to find an exactly equivalent meaning for a particular word.

I will illustrate what I mean for each of these issues with some specific examples.

“Evolving” words

Consider the word “barbarian”. As used by first century Jews, it generally meant anyone not a Jew, although civilized Greeks were sometimes considered sepa­rately. Good examples of this are the way the apostle used this word in Acts 28:4, Romans 1:14, and 1 Corinthians 14:11. The NIV chooses to avoid the word “barbarian” in all these cases, but retains it in Colossians 3:11, where no doubt the translators felt the sense was equivalent to the modern way we would use it in North America. The modern definition of “barbarian” is generally considered to be “one who is an extremely aggressive or violent person”. The word “barbarian” is also sometimes used as a slang expression describing an uncultured, uncouth person. Hence, while the KJV on occasion equates “barbarian” to foreigner, we would be extremely tactless to use the word in that sense today.

Another example is the use of the word “intercourse”, which we find sometimes in the writings of our 19th century brethren. In the 19th century the primary (and almost exclusive) meaning of this word was: communication or exchanges between people or groups, especially “conversation or social activity”.2Obviously, I hardly need to point out that this is not the primary meaning today. Sometimes reading 19th century literature, where this word is used, can lead to acute embar­rassment where none was intended.

Archaic words

A few years ago I was conducting a baptism interview of a young lady who had grown up in our Sunday school. She was quite an accomplished young person. She was (and still is) a dedicated Bible student and well read in the Truth, as well as at the top of her class at the university. I asked her to briefly describe how our Lord Jesus Christ was a “propitiation” for our sins? A puzzled look came over her face and she turned to me and said, “I have no idea what you mean by propitia­tion!” The word simply wasn’t part of her vocabulary, nor is it for most people in America. When was the last time you heard that word in common speech, or even from the platform? I recently asked 25 brothers and sisters at random (not all in my own ecclesia) and only two (a brother and sister in their seventh decade) were able to define it correctly.

Apparently the NIV translators agree that the word is archaic; they have used alternate language in all three places that it appears in the KJV.3The NKJV on the other hand retains “propitiation” in all three instances. Ironically, most of the brothers and sisters that I queried used the NKJV or KJV, but still didn’t know what the word meant — in fact, a significant sample (about half) thought the word wasn’t in the Bible. This points out something else about archaic words; namely, if a word isn’t in common usage then our retentive memory isn’t reinforced by repetition. Thus, retaining knowledge of it fades quickly even when we may have read the word occasionally in our Bible studies. This is especially true for a word such as “propitiation”, which appears only three times in the New Testament.

Another archaic word that is a challenge to define, as well as to pronounce, is “concupiscence”. This word also appears only three times4 in the KJV. There is no minority opinion in this case, with both the NIV and NKJV omitting this word. Strong’s defines the word as “a longing (especially for what is forbidden)”; an American English dictionary defines the word as “powerful feelings of physi­cal desire”.5But neither the Strong’s nor the common dictionary tell us what the object of that desire was all about. We might suspect that it has to do with sexual immorality, but at least in one case (Col. 3:5) fornication is already mentioned separately in the same verse. Hence, either the translators were being redundant or “concupiscence” means something other than illicit sexual desire.

In the cases of “propitiation” and “concupiscence” we find ourselves dealing with archaic words that only appear a few times, but there are other cases where the translators, in updating the English of the 17th-century King James Version to the late 20th-century American version, had far more numerous challenges. Take the words “transgress” and its derivatives “transgression” and “transgressions”. These appear 14, 50 and 47 times, respectively, in the KJV. But they are entirely omitted in the NIV. Finally, the word “wrath” appears an astounding 194 times in the AV, but not once in the NIV.

“Fornication” is another archaic word that is difficult to translate. It appears 32 times in the KJV, but is entirely absent in the NIV translation. It is a difficult word to fathom at times since it can refer to a number of different ideas ranging from general sexual immorality, to promiscuity, adultery or homosexuality. It is a word however, that once led someone to an interest in Christ. I was teaching a particularly unruly class at school one day, many years ago. In my frustration I finally blurted out to the class something to the effect that they didn’t seem very interested in physics, and that fornication seemed to be the only thing on their minds. This appeared to draw nothing but blank expressions from the class, so I dismissed them with the hope that things would be better the next session. But after class one of the students lingered behind and came up to ask me if I was a Bible student. I replied yes and asked what led him to ask such a question. He quickly replied, “Because only a Bible student would know the word ‘fornication’!” This led to a discussion on the Bible and an invitation to attend our ecclesial Bible class, which he did for the next couple of years until he graduated. This was more than 30 years ago; I doubt such word recognition on the part of a young person would be the same today.6

These few examples should suffice to illustrate how words eventually disappear from common usage and become archaic. Nevertheless, the ideas expressed by such words have to be replaced by translators — while at the same time somehow not destroying the sense of the text.

Idiomatic expressions

These are words or phrases that have different meanings, even in the same language, depending on the cultural connections. For example, an Englishman faced with a tough situation might describe it with the cricket expression “a sticky wicket” (at least I think that’s what he might mean!) — while an American might describe the same situation with a baseball expression, such as “two outs in the bottom of the ninth”.

Then again, a can of fizzy beverage is a “soda” on the east coast of the USA, but “pop” in the Midwest. When we lived in Italy I was constantly making idiomatic errors, having learned my Italian from textbooks and not from the street language of Milan where we were living. I found out that using the word “automobile” to retrieve your vehicle from a parking lot attendant would produce nothing but a blank look. To a Milanese an automobile was “una machina”, and that doesn’t literally translate as “a machine” either! The meaning of “machina” in Milan can only be appreciated if you can also envision the passion with which the word is spoken. To a Milanese an automobile was (and probably still is) an extension of his soul.

Now what about the Bible? There are a number of idiomatic expressions that sometimes give us fits if we are not steeped in the whole counsel of God’s Word. Taking such idiomatic expressions out of context can cause great misunderstand­ing. Two examples that come to mind are Genesis 4:7 (“sin is crouching at your door”) and, of course, the first few verses of the Gospel of John (“in the begin­ning”). We should not take either of these passages literally, or else we will end up not really appreciating their meaning.

Finding exact equivalents

Lastly, comes the challenge of finding the exact meaning of a word in translating from one language to another. English is probably the world’s most expressive language, with many shades of meaning possible for various ideas. Yet there are times when this is not true, and trying to map the text from an ancient language to English leaves the translator with a perplexing shortage of words to express the idea. Two examples of this readily come to mind. The first is the various names of God in the Hebrew of the Old Testament: when translated into English they lose some of their subtlety. The KJV at least gave the reader a clue to the beauty and majesty of the original by using various spelling devices, i.e., “LORD” (all capitals) for “YHWH”, “God” for “El”, and so on. Modern English versions of the Old Testament have progressively obscured these shades of meaning and often leave the reader virtually ignorant of the variations in the original.

A second example is the English word “love”. “Love” is used to interpret three different Greek words. Apparently, just as it is said that Eskimos have numerous words for “snow” (something essential to their culture), likewise Mediterra­nean people seem to have more words for expressing different forms of passion (something apparently not so readily embraced in the colder climes of northern Europe). In Greek three words express various shades of passion, and these are all wrapped up in the one English word “love”. The Greeks use the word “eros” to express erotic love, “phileo” to mean friendship (found in “Philadelphia”, mean­ing brotherly love), and finally “agape”, which best translates as deep spiritual love. When more than one of these Greek words appears in the same narrative we sometimes have difficulty deciphering the exact meaning of the text. A good example of this is the dialogue in the Gospel of John (John 21:15-17), where Jesus asks Peter if he loves (“agape”) him and Peter keeps answering him that he does love (“phileo”) him. The subtle difference in the Greek text is completely lost in the English translation.

Conclusion

Given all these issues about finding the exact meaning of Scriptural words, how then does the Bible convey God’s Truth irrespective of time, culture, and language of translation? Do we really need to be specialists in ancient Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, as the clergy of some orthodox religions claim, in order to properly understand the Word? In the course of this study we will show emphatically that this is not the case. The basic principles necessary for our salvation are expressed as conceptual ideas illustrated by various literary forms ranging from history, to biography, poetry, prophecy, and dramatic narrative. This means that, in the end, we can truly understand the things necessary for our salvation regardless of what language we happen to know, or what time in history we were born, or what are our cultural circumstances. We intend to show that little words can mean a lot!

  1. Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil, The Story of English. New York: Penguin, 1992.
  2. Encarta World English Dictionary, 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Place.
  3. Romans 3:25 (“sacrifice of atonement”); 1 John 2:2 and 4:10 (“atoning sacrifice”).
  4. Romans 7:8; Colossians 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:5.
  5. Encarta World English Dictionary.
  6. However, the word “fornication” is not totally unknown to our decadent western world. We have just noticed an advertisement for a new cable TV series, premiering this summer, entitled… “Californication”! Surely a “sign of the times”, and a warning: Editor.