Cancelling Jesus's Words in Translation
In celebration of the day before Easter, I hate it when anti-Christians say that the Bible has been changed. But I hate it more when I run across clear examples of where it has been changed in translation. It is sad when Jesus’s humor is lost, but it is tragic when his ideas are canceled. Our biblical translations today are never judged by their accuracy and fidelity to the words of New Testament. They are instead judged by how much people like the way they sound and how easy they make it for preachers to promote specific ideas.
Today, let us look at one particularly blatant case of editing in John 8:51. The verse starts with Jesus’s “amen,” catchphrase (discussed in detail here), but let us look at three versions of what follows.
The KJV translated it as “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.”
The NIV offers, “Whoever obeys my word will never see death.”
The NLT paraphrases it as: “Anyone who obeys my teaching will never die!”
This is a nice thing for preachers to quote and a nice thing for Christians to hear, except it isn’t what Jesus said. All these translations leave off the ending three-word phrase in the original Greek. And, if you read any of my analysis here, you know the verse ending is often the punchline, where Jesus surprises his listeners.
And this problem isn’t only with these three translations. I have examined every popular English translation. They all cut off the ending of this verse, a conspiracy to shield us from Jesus’s actual words. Nor could this be an accident. The same phrase is canceled out of a very similar verse, John 11:26, translated as (KJV), “And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” This verse also ends with the same three words, but they are again cut out.
Curiously, in the following verse, Jesus’s opponents quote him and also leave off this ending phrase. They are making the point that everyone dies so the ending phrase gets in their way. They ignore it as readily as today’s translators.
What was so terrible here that we cannot hear it?
The Canceled Words
The censored phrase is, in Greek: εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, eis ton aiona. What does it mean? Something close to “for this lifetime” or “up to this age.” As with aionios, the adjective from the noun, discussed in this article about “eternal life,” the sense was “lasting” and “enduring” for a long period of time. However, this is not how it is usually translated. The usual Biblical translation of this phrase is “forever,” or “eternal.” The problem with this translation arises when Jesus uses it with an action that never happens. Does it make sense to talk about something we never do forever? In English, it just sounds redundant. In Greek, it sounds absurd. To anyone just reading the Greek, it is clear that this final phrase, “for this lifetime,” limits the “never” in some way. It doesn’t emphasize it.
Jesus uses this exact Greek phrase eleven other times. It appears in all the Gospels except for Luke. When not cut out, it is always translated into English as “forever” or as “eternal,” but it didn’t mean that at the time. The Christian viewpoint wants it to mean “eternal” despite the evidence to the contrary. So translation hides that evidence as much as possible.
Analysis of the Phrase
How can you know what this phrase actually means? I will give you the details so you can work out your own translation if you desire. It is fairly simple.
The first word has the most possible interpretations. It is the preposition, εἰς (eis), which means "into (of place)," "up to (of time)," "until (of time)," "as much as (of measure or limit)," "as far as (of measure or limit)," and "for (of purpose or object)." The object, aion, seems to measure time so it seems “up to” or “until” works best.
The next word is the definite article, τὸν (hos), meaning "the,", but the Greek article is much closer to our demonstrative pronouns ("this," "that," "these," "those"). See this article for more. This article limits the next noun to a specific time, “this” age or “this” lifetime.
The final word is αἰῶνα (aion), which means "life," "lifetime," "age," or "generation." It is the source of our word “eon.” This word is most frequently translated in the Bible as “ever” as part of “for ever,” but it never had that sense before the New Testament. Even in the Bible, it is also often translated as “world.” The translators used “world” when Jesus was clearly referring to the current “era” or “epoch.” Obviously, it cannot mean the “current era” if the translators want it to mean “eternal.”
More Uncertainty
There is another problem with this verse as a sure promise of never seeing death. The form of the verb translated as “will never see death” is a “mood” of possibility. This is called the subjunctive. It should be translated into English as “might never see death.” The translators try to hide this by making the verb look like the future tense. The verb is not a prophecy. It is an uncertainty. The problem is that this uncertainty is in Jesus’s words.
Jesus uses the same form for the verb “shall never die” in John 11:26. The translators try to hide this in the same way, making it look like the future tense. It should be translated as “might never die.” This is much less satisfying for preachers.
Conclusions
Jesus’s words are often difficult. They often do not easily conform to Christian teaching. When this happens, I tend to believe Jesus rather than religious leaders. The Christian religious community bases a lot of its “sales pitch” on the idea of eternal life. Anything that makes those claims seem less certain is carefully hidden in translation. This makes me suspicious, not of Jesus, but of the religious enterprise.
In the Gospels, Jesus spends a lot of his time debating the religious leaders of his era. This verse was a part of one of those debates. For some reason, he thought the religious leaders of his time as self-serving. I suspect that some of his opinions have rubbed off on me. I am reminded of Dostoevsky’s story of the Grand Inquisitor in the Brother’s Karamazov. When Jesus returns, the Grand Inquisitor told Him that the Church provided much stricter, clearer rules for men and so they must again sentence him to death. It seems biblical translators have the same view, that they don’t want Jesus muddying their waters.
Happy Easter, Everyone!
As always, if you like this article, please click on the HEART below.