Lost In Translation: Mark 8:34, 35, 36, 37

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

(Note: This article is part of a series explaining the deeper meaning of some of Jesus’s most popular verses. See this article for the beginning of this series.)

These four verses are inspiring in translation, but their connection and meaning are lost or dimmed by the confusing English words used. Jesus’s listeners would have heard each of these verses as connected, building to a clear and pleasingly contradictory punchline.

Mark 8:34

KJV:  Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

This verse is connected to the previous one where Christ says, "Get behind me, adversary (satanas)." This verse has “come after me,”, but both verses use the same Greek phrase, opiso mou, “behind/after me.” I used the KJV version because the NIV takes out this phrase entirely, replacing it with “be my follower.” Other translations do this as well.

In the previous verse, "Get behind me" seems like a rebuke, but, in light of this statement, it is more a request for support, just as we ask people to support us by "getting behind us." How do we support Jesus? By rejecting “self” and emulating him.

This brings us to the second play on words: the "take up your cross."  While this is how Christians translate this phrase today, it is not the way the apostles heard it.

The term translated as "cross" means a "stake" or "post."  Criminals were not hung on the refined crosses depicted today, but nailed to simple upright posts, trees with bark and no branches put in the ground, tall enough to be seen. Think about it: thousands were kill this way. Why take the time to plane beams into squares and join them into a cross when a simple stake did the job? This was understood even after Emperor Constantine’s vision of a cross in 319 AD. The Latin Vulgate translation was composed after that and the Greek word was translated into the Latin word for “stake” not cross. This first “cross,” was symbolic, taken from the first letter of Jesus’s name in Greek, which is an “X.” See this article for a discussion of the Greek word translated as "cross".

The phrase “take up your cross” would have been heard in that era as "pull up your stakes." The phrase had the same metaphoric meaning as it does now: pull up what holds you in place. Stakes marked boundaries and held up tents, which were celebrated in an annual festival among Judeans. Nomadic tents used a number of stakes to hold it to the ground and one central stake pole that was used as a walking stick after the tent cloth was folded up.

The word translated as “himself” is easy to overlook, but it connects to the important idea of “self.” The verb, “lift up” is in the “middle voice” that further emphasizes self. This from is used to indicate that an action performed on one’s “self” (see this article).

Listeners Heard: If anyone wants to show up after me, he must reject himself and pull up that stake of his, and follow me.

Mark 8:35

NIV: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.

This translation should sound odd to all Christians. The fact that we accept it shows how accepting we have become of poor translation. Christianity promises eternal life. Did Jesus say that we must lose that life? Does that sound eternal?

The problem is that the word translated as "life" means "self." It connects this verse to the “himself” in the previous one.  Whenever Jesus discusses “life” in the sense of being alive he uses a different Greek word.  The word used here is the source of our word psyche, which is most commonly translated as "soul" in the NT. This “life” word is translated as “soul” in the next verse, further disconnecting the verses. This word is discussed in detail in this article. 

We also see the opposite translation problem in these two verses where two different Greek words are both translated as "save." The one here is a more common word (see this article), while the one in the next verse is only used in that verse and its parallels in Mark and Luke. The key opposites here are "save" and "lose," which, in English, are very general words,  but, in Greek, have meanings more directly related to "self." They have the sense of "rescue" and "destroy."

Listeners Heard: Because someone when he wants to rescue this, his own self, he will lose it. Someone, however, when he  loses that self of his, on account of me and the good news, he will rescue it.

Mark 8:36

NIV: What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

From verse to verse here, the original Greek is much more consistent and makes more sense than our English translations. The Greek word that was translated as "life" in Mark 8:35  is translated here as "soul."  The concept of "self" works better with our idea of “soul” but soul has purely religious connotations that the Greek “self” does not have.

There is no word meaning “good” here. The term translated as "good" means to gain an advantage” or “to make a profit.” This word is from the same root as the Greek word for "debt." The word translated as “gain” also means “to make a profit” but with the additional meaning of to “save oneself.” These words are changed to hide the often very economic words Jesus really used.

The “profit” made is “the whole world.” This Greek word means “society,” the human world, not the God-made one. See this article. Translating it as “the world” impacts the punchline following it because “the world” is made of people, and society is made of institutions.

The word translated as "lose/forfeit" means" “to pay a penalty.” It is passive, meaning to be penalized.

Listeners Heard: Because what does it profit a man to save himself a profit, this whole society, and to be penalized that self of his?

Mark 8:37

NIV: Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

The key term here is "exchange," which is a noun, not a verb. The word means the object traded in return for trying to get something else. At the time, much of the economy was based on barter, trades among the farmers, fishermen, and shepherds who raised the food. Money was only used to pay taxes and buy locally unavailable goods from cities. We would simply call this noun a "price," because we no longer barter products.

Appropriately, this verse ends on the concept of “that soul of his,” because that idea has been the focus of all four of these verses.

Listeners Heard: Because what price should a man give for that self of his?

This is the punchline. The logic of these verses is that, by denying the self and losing, we make a “self” that is beyond the values in this society. It is not more important than “the world,” because that makes it more important than all the other selves there are. It is more important than society.