Some of the Hebrew and Greek phrases that are translated in English in association with “name,” including “in the name of,” “in my name,” “in your name,” “on the account of my name,” “on the account of your name” (according to a classification by Robert Bratcher in The Bible Translator 1963, p. 72ff. , phrases that belong to the categories of “Agency or instrumentality” and “Representation”) present a number of challenges in other languages.
Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight
Eugene Nida (1947, p 178ff.) explains this way:
“The biblical attitudes toward human personality are of great theological importance. There is, however, only one word which produces any considerable difficulty in other languages. This is the word ‘name.’ The great difference attached to the significance of the name of a person in the Bible times in contrast with our own culture is very important. Note such phrases as ‘whatsoever ye shall ask in my name,’ John 14:13, ‘believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God,’ John 3:18, and ‘life through his name,’ John 20:31. These expressions are generally difficult for us to understand, for the word ‘name’ does not mean the same to us as it meant to those of Bible times. To them the name was the symbolization of the authority and personality of the individual who possessed the name. To us a name is far less important. It may be changed whenever one can convince a judge that another name might be more economically advantageous. The name is also a legal method of giving one’s written assent to certain business transactions, but to us it is not the symbol of the personality.”
The translation in Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl typically is “in someone’s authority” (for instance “I have come in my Father’s name” in John 5:43 becomes “I have come on my Father’s authority”) (source Nida 1947, p. 179), or in Highland Puebla Nahuatl with the more paraphrastic equivalent “as though on orders from you” or in Tzeltal as “by your authority, so he said” (both examples for Mark 9:38 and 39, see Bratcher / Nida).
In Guhu-Samane, Mark 11:9 (in English: “Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord”) is translated as “Blessed is the Lord’s namesake who comes.” “In the name of the Lord” caused “puzzlement [because] “has he just assumed the name of the Lord, valid or otherwise? [But] with ‘blessed is the Lord’s namesake who comes’ the strong bond between the namesake and the important ancestor for whom named entitles the namesake to the deference due the ancestor. Thought very proper in this context.” (Source: Ernest L. Richert in Notes on Translation December 1963: p. 4-7; reprinted in The Bible Translator 1965, p. 198ff. )
Barclay Newman (see The Bible Translator 1974, pp, 432ff. ) reports on different solutions for the translation of the Today’s Malay Version (Alkitab Berita Baik, 1987):
In Malay “the phrase ‘in my name’ is problematic (…) since it sounds like the use of magic. For this reason [the English] Today’s English Version (Good News Bible) was followed at such passages as John 5:43 and 10:25, where ‘in the name of my Father’ is translated as ‘with my Father’s authority’ and ‘by my Father’s authority’ [respectively]. In John 12:13 ‘in the name of the Lord’ has become ‘in his (the Lord’s) behalf,’ following the common language German translation Die Gute Nachricht. In John 14:13, ‘because you are my followers’ is used, in John in 15:16, 16:23 and 24 ‘as my followers,’ in John 17:11 ‘by your own power, the power you gave me,’ and in John 14:26 ‘in my place.'”
Other translations for “in the name of Jesus Christ” include “in the authority of Jesus Christ” (Isthmus Mixe), “calling on Jesus Christ” (Teutila Cuicatec), “calling the name of Jesus Christ over you” (Ayutla Mixtec), “because of Jesus” (Tepeuxila Cuicatec), “by the power of the name of Jesus Christ” (Chichimeca-Jonaz), or “the word of Jesus Christ is strong” (Lalana Chinantec). (source for this and above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.).
The Greek terms that are translated as “patient” or “patience” are translated in a variety of ways.
Eugene Nida (1952, p. 130) gives some examples:
“Peace is the quality of the soul; patience is the behavior of the soul. The Aymara of Bolivia have described patience well by the phrase ‘a waiting heart.’
“The Ngäbere of Panama describe patience in more vivid terms. They say that it is ‘chasing down your temper.’ The impatient person lets his temper run away with him. Patience requires one to “chase down his temper” and get it under control [see also Mairasi down below].
“The Yucateco describe patience as ‘strength not to fall.’ This seems to include almost more than patience, but it is important to note that this Yucateco translation recognizes that impatience means ‘falling.’ For some of us, who tend to take a certain secret pride in our impatience—describing it as energetic drive—it might be well to recognize that impatience is failure, while patience is strength.
“The San Blas Kuna in Panama use a rather strange phrase to depict patience. They say ‘not caring what happens.’ But this is not meant as condoning foolhardy indifference to life and danger. It reflects a kind of reckless confidence in God, a confidence not bred of desperation but of utter reliance. The patient person is not concerned about what happens; he is willing to wait in confidence.”
In Mairasi, the phrase that is employed is “stop (our) anger” (source: Enggavoter 2004) and in Suki “slow careful thinking way” is used (source L. and E. Twyman in The Bible Translator 1953, p. 91ff. )
In Kwang an expression is used that directly translates as “carry one’s head.” (Source: Mark Vanderkooi right here)
Following are a number of back-translations of James 5:10:
Uma: “All my relatives! Remember the prophets long ago who brought the Word of the Lord. They were patient and withstood, suffering difficulties/hardships. We should follow [the example of] their patience.” (Source: Uma Back Translation)
Yakan: “My brothers, think about the prophets of old. They were the ones God told to spread his word. Take them as an example. Even though they were persecuted they persevered enduring.” (Source: Yakan Back Translation)
Western Bukidnon Manobo: “Brothers, let us imitate the endurance of the prophets of God long ago. For as they were preaching the Word of the Lord, they had to endure persecution.” (Source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “Remember the prophets who spoke what God made known to them so that you will follow-(their)-example, because even though they were hardshipped, they endured it nonetheless (appreciative particle).” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
Tagbanwa: “My siblings in believing, hopefully you will make yourselves like the prophets of the past, those whose job was causing people to know what God wanted told to them. For they really didn’t get-fed-up/irritated with hardships, but rather they endured them with a good mind/inner-being.” (Source: Tagbanwa Back Translation)
Tenango Otomi: “God’s prophets did not get impatient even though they had times of suffering. Do like they did, don’t be impatient.” (Source: Tenango Otomi Back Translation)
Eugene Nida wrote the following about the translation of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek terms that are typically translated with “prophet” in English:
“The tendency in many translations is to use ‘to foretell the future’ for ‘prophesy,’ and ‘one who foretells the future’ for ‘prophet.’ This is not always a recommended usage, particularly if such expressions denote certain special native practices of spirit contact and control. It is true, of course, that prophets of the Bible did foretell the future, but this was not always their principal function. One essential significance of the Greek word prophētēs is ‘one who speaks forth,’ principally, of course, as a forth-teller of the Divine will. A translation such as ‘spokesman for God’ may often be employed profitably.” (1947, p. 234f.)
Following is a list of (back-) translations from other languages (click or tap for details):
Ayutla Mixtec: “one who talks as God’s representative”
Isthmus Mixe: “speaker for God” (source for this and two above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.)
Mezquital Otomi / Paasaal: “God’s messenger” (source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff. and Fabian N. Dapila in The Bible Translator 2024, p. 415ff.)
Noongar: Warda Marridjiny or “News Traveling” (source: Warda-Kwabba Luke-Ang)
Kutu: mtula ndagu or “one who gives the prediction of the past and the future” (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific translation notes in Paratext)
French 1985 translation by Chouraqui: inspiré or “inspired one” (“someone in whom God has breathed [Latin: in + spiro]) (source: Watson 2023, p. 45)
In Ixcatlán Mazatec a term is used that specifically includes women. (Source: Robert Bascom)
“In some instances these spiritual terms result from adaptations reflecting the native life and culture. Among the Northern Grebo people of Liberia, a missionary wanted some adequate term for ‘prophet,’ and she was fully aware that the native word for ‘soothsayer’ or ‘diviner’ was no equivalent for the Biblical prophet who spoke forth for God. Of course, much of what the prophets said referred to the future, and though this was an essential part of much of their ministry, it was by no means all. The right word for the Gbeapo people would have to include something which would not only mean the foretelling of important events but the proclamation of truth as God’s representative among the people. At last the right word came; it was ‘God’s town-crier.’ Every morning and evening the official representative of the chief goes through the village crying out the news, delivering the orders of the chief, and announcing important coming events. ‘God’s town-crier’ would be the official representative of God, announcing to the people God’s doings, His commands, and His pronouncements for their salvation and well-being. For the Northern Grebo people the prophet is no weird person from forgotten times; he is as real as the human, moving message of the plowman Amos, who became God’s town-crier to a calloused people.” (source: Nida 1952, p. 20)
In British Sign Language it is is translated with a sign that depicts a message coming from God to a person (the upright finger) and then being passed on to others. (Source: Anna Smith)
“Prophet” in British Sign Language (source: Christian BSL, used with permission)
The Hebrew adonai in the Old Testament typically refers to God. The shorter adon (and in two cases in the book of Daniel the Aramaic mare [מָרֵא]) is also used to refer to God but more often for concepts like “master,” “owner,” etc. In English Bible translations all of those are translated with “Lord” if they refer to God.
In English Old Testament translations, as in Old Testament translations in many other languages, the use of Lord (or an equivalent term in other languages) is not to be confused with Lord (or the equivalent term with a different typographical display for other languages). While the former translates adonai, adon and mare, the latter is a translation for the tetragrammaton (YHWH) or the Name of God. See tetragrammaton (YHWH) and the article by Andy Warren-Rothlin in Noss / Houser, p. 618ff. for more information.
In the New Testament, the Greek term kurios has at least four different kinds of use:
referring to “God,” especially in Old Testament quotations,
meaning “master” or “owner,” especially in parables, etc.,
as a form of address (see for instance John 4:11: “Sir, you have no bucket”),
or, most often, referring to Jesus
In the first and fourth case, it is also translated as “Lord” in English.
Most languages naturally don’t have one word that covers all these meanings. According to Bratcher / Nida, “the alternatives are usually (1) a term which is an honorific title of respect for a high-ranking person and (2) a word meaning ‘boss’, ‘master’, or ‘chief.’ (…) and on the whole it has generally seemed better to employ a word of the second category, in order to emphasize the immediate personal relationship, and then by context to build into the word the prestigeful character, since its very association with Jesus Christ will tend to accomplish this purpose.”
When looking at the following list of back-translations of the terms that translators in the different languages have used for both kurios and adonai to refer to God and Jesus respectively, it might be helpful for English readers to recall the etymology of the English “Lord.” While this term might have gained an exalted meaning in the understanding of many, it actually comes from hlaford or “loaf-ward,” referring to the lord of the castle who was the keeper of the bread (source: Rosin 1956, p. 121).
Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight
Following are some of the solutions that don’t rely on a different typographical display (see above):
Iyansi: Mwol. Mwol is traditionally used for the “chief of a group of communities and villages” with legal, temporal, and spiritual authority (versus the “mfum [the term used in other Bantu languages] which is used for the chief of one community of people in one village”). Mwol is also used for twins who are “treated as special children, highly honored, and taken care of like kings and queens.” (Source: Kividi Kikama in Greed / Kruger, p. 396ff.)
Binumarien: Karaambaia: “fight-leader” (Source: Oates 1995, p. 255)
Warlpiri: Warlaljamarri (owner or possessor of something — for more information tap or click here)
We have come to rely on another term which emphasizes God’s essential nature as YHWH, namely jukurrarnu (see tetragrammaton (YHWH)). This word is built on the same root jukurr– as is jukurrpa, ‘dreaming.’ Its basic meaning is ‘timelessness’ and it is used to describe physical features of the land which are viewed as always being there. Some speakers view jukurrarnu in terms of ‘history.’ In all Genesis references to YHWH we have used Kaatu Jukurrarnu. In all Mark passages where kurios refers to God and not specifically to Christ we have also used Kaatu Jukurrarnu.
New Testament references to Christ as kurios are handled differently. At one stage we experimented with the term Watirirririrri which refers to a ceremonial boss of highest rank who has the authority to instigate ceremonies. While adequately conveying the sense of Christ’s authority, there remained potential negative connotations relating to Warlpiri ceremonial life of which we might be unaware.
Here it is that the Holy Spirit led us to make a chance discovery. Transcribing the personal testimony of the local Warlpiri pastor, I noticed that he described how ‘my Warlaljamarri called and embraced me (to the faith)’. Warlaljamarri is based on the root warlalja which means variously ‘family, possessions, belongingness’. A warlaljamarri is the ‘owner’ or ‘possessor’ of something. While previously being aware of the ‘ownership’ aspect of warlaljamarri, this was the first time I had heard it applied spontaneously and naturally in a fashion which did justice to the entire concept of ‘Lordship’. Thus references to Christ as kurios are now being handled by Warlaljamarri.” (Source: Stephen Swartz, The Bible Translator 1985, p. 415ff. )
Mairasi: Onggoao Nem (“Throated One” — “Leader,” “Elder”) or Enggavot Nan (“Above-One”) (source: Enggavoter 2004)
Obolo: Okaan̄-ene (“Owner of person(s)”) (source: Enene Enene)
Lotha Naga: Opvui (“owner of house / field / cattle”) — since both “Lord” and YHWH are translated as Opvui there is an understanding that “Opvui Jesus is the same as the Opvui of the Old Testament”
Seediq: Tholang, loan word from Min Nan Chinese (the majority language in Taiwan) thâu-lâng (頭儂): “Master” (source: Covell 1998, p. 248)
Thai: phra’ phu pen cao (พระผู้เป็นเจ้า) (divine person who is lord) or ong(kh) cao nay (องค์เจ้านาย) (<divine classifier>-lord-boss) (source: Stephen Pattemore)
Arabic often uses different terms for adonai or kurios referring to God (al-rabb الرب) and kurios referring to Jesus (al-sayyid الـسـيـد). Al-rabb is also the term traditionally used in Arabic Christian-idiom translations for YHWH, and al-sayyid is an honorary term, similar to English “lord” or “sir” (source: Andy Warren-Rothlin).
Tamil also uses different terms for adonai/kurios when referring to God and kurios when referring to Jesus. The former is Karttar கர்த்தர், a Sanskrit-derived term with the original meaning of “creator,” and the latter in Āṇṭavar ஆண்டவர், a Tamil term originally meaning “govern” or “reign” (source: Natarajan Subramani).
Burunge: Looimoo: “owner who owns everything” (in the Burunge Bible translation, this term is only used as a reference to Jesus and was originally used to refer to the traditional highest deity — source: Michael Endl in Holzhausen / Riderer 2010, p. 48)
Aguacateco: Ajcaw ske’j: “the one to whom we belong and who is above us” (source: Rita Peterson in Holzhausen / Riderer 2010, p. 49)
Konkomba: Tidindaan: “He who is the owner of the land and reigns over the people” (source: Lidorio 2007, p. 66)
Law (2013, p. 97) writes about how the Ancient GreekSeptuagint‘s translation of the Hebrew adonai was used by the New Testament writers as a bridge between the Old and New Testaments: “Another case is the use of kurios referring to Jesus. For Yahweh (in English Bibles: ‘the Lord‘), the Septuagint uses kurios. Although the term kurios usually has to do with one’s authority over others, when the New Testament authors use this word from the Septuagint to refer to Jesus, they are making an extraordinary claim: Jesus of Nazareth is to be identified with Yahweh.”
This verse contains a third plea for patience, using the example of the prophets. The indication that this is a third plea is seen in the use of the address brethren, meaning fellow believers, for the third time in the paragraph. The prophets are used as an example of suffering and patience. “Prophets” are primarily not people who predict the future, as the rendering in some languages suggests. They are basically spokesmen for God and interpreters of God’s will, and the term is often expressed as “persons who speak [or, proclaim] God’s message.” Here the term refers to the Old Testament prophets. Not only did they often fail to gain a hearing for their message (Isa 6.9-10), they were also frequently the targets of persecution (Jer 20.8; Matt 5.12). A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark, page 7, provides a list of helpful examples on the translation of “prophet” from a number of languages; for example, “one who speaks for God,” “one who speaks the voice of God,” “God’s sent-word person,” and others. The word example is used of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet (John 13.15) and of Jesus’ suffering (1 Peter 2.21). In some languages it may be desirable to use a word like “model” or “pattern” for example, as Revised English Bible has done. And in certain languages this clause may be translated as “you must act as they did” or “you must behave as they did.”
The word suffering in suffering and patience is used only here in the New Testament. It basically means “hardship” (so New American Bible) suffered at the hand of others and therefore may be rendered as “ill-treatment” (New English Bible/ Revised English Bible) or “adversity” (so R.P. Martin). The pair of nouns can be taken as a hendiadys, that is, two terms expressing one idea, and may be rendered in a single phrase such as “patient endurance under suffering” (Good News Translation), “patience under ill-treatment” (Revised English Bible), or “suffering patiently endured” (Goodspeed).
The prophets are people who spoke in the name of the Lord. Here the Lord refers to God. By making this statement James seems interested in conveying the thought that these spokesmen for God were subject to suffering because of their service to him, not because of their wrongdoing. And despite their suffering the prophets remained patient. To speak in the name of the Lord means to speak as a representative of the one who sent them, indicating that their messages bear the authority of God (compare Contemporary English Version “spoke for the Lord”). In languages where prophets will be expressed as “people who proclaim God’s message,” we may render the clause the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord as “those people who proclaimed the Lord’s message,” it being understood that they spoke in his name.
In translating this verse it may be desirable to structure the sentence somewhat differently. In some languages we may have to take the prophets as the primary focus, and so they are best identified at the beginning of the sentence; for example:
• My brothers and sisters, remember the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Take them as examples of patient endurance under suffering.
• My fellow believers, the prophets proclaimed the message on behalf of the Lord. Take them as examples of people who endured suffering patiently.
• My fellow believers, do you remember those people who proclaimed God’s message long ago? They were patient even when they had to suffer. You should be patient like this too.
Quoted with permission from Loh, I-Jin and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Letter from James. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.