Verses Lost in Translation 1: Luke 12:49

A supporter of Rediscovering Jesus recently wrote me saying they were interested in specific verses that are lost in translation. This new series is on that topic. This is one of my favorites, Luke 12:49:

KJV: I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled!
NIV: I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

The mistranslation of one word and the outright change of another confuses the whole meaning of this verse. The last word, the punchline, has a double-meaning that contains the whole point of what Jesus wishes.

Some Context

All translation of the New Testament is sloppy, and it has gotten sloppier in the 500 years since the first English version. The KJV at least tried to translate each word. Modern Bibles often mimic the mistakes of the original and, on top of that, paraphrase Jesus’s words. Sometimes these translations are misleading intentionally, but more often it is because the translators weren’t careful enough reading the Greek. What they lack is a devotion to accuracy without presuppositions.

These translations filter out how entertaining and emotional Jesus was. They translate him in the blandest way possible. If we stick closer to the Greek and his original word order, we discover that much of what he said was humorous, dramatic, and emotional. This is all true of this verse. Translators tone it down when Jesus said odd things, but he does this frequently to get a reaction and stimulate his listeners. I find new entertaining things every day, and I have done a new translation of each verse about every four years. It takes me that long to go through them all. And every four years, my understanding of Jesus’s use of Greek improves as does my discovery of my own past mistakes. Every four years, I find also more and more problems with biblical versions.

I am a translator first and foremost. I offer no dogma except Jesus’s words themselves. Translators make assumptions based upon what they have been taught about Jesus’s teaching. I appreciate Christian teaching and its two-thousand years of traditions, but I seek to get back to what made Jesus's words so exciting that they spread like a wildfire. Which is an analogy that gets us back to Luke 12:49.

The Greek

The three critical Greek words that are confused in Luke 12:49 are translated as “come,” “send/bring,” and “kindled.”

The Greek “come” is a commonly misunderstood word explained in this article. Here, it means “start,” which is its primary meaning in most of ancient Greek. How do we know? Because it has an object, “fire.” The “send/bring” are intentionally mistranslated to make “fire” their object. The word, “fire,” is also interesting because we think of “fire” as a negative in Christianity, the fires of hell, a source of pain. This is the opposite of how Jesus’s listeners heard the idea. To them, it was only a good thing, the fire of Prometheus, see this article. Here, in this verse, is a metaphor for something but what? A battle? The end of the world? Not as Jesus’s listeners heard it. But we don’t find out until, of course, the punchline, the last word in the verse.

Now we come to the intentionally misleading, the “send/bring.” It is a humorous word that Jesus uses frequently. I don’t know if it was changed because it was funny or because it seemed too crazy, but it means “to toss” or “to throw.” The last confusing word is “kindled.” It only appears in this verse of Jesus, and it is the punchline with two meanings. Both can be related to fire. Jesus uses several other verbs to mean “start a fire, but this one is special because of its double meaning, one the resonates very well in English.

The Verse

Jesus starts by saying:

Listeners Heard: I started a fire to toss over the earth.

If this sounds a little odd, it is because it is the kind of dramatic/humorous line that Jesus used to get attention, which bible translators want to tame. I love the line in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, “Aslan is not a tame lion.” C.S. Lewis understood Jesus. Jesus was not a tame teacher except in translation.

Now, Jesus gets emotional, speaking about how he feels. He doesn’t do this often, but when he does, we are lucky if it makes it into translation. It didn’t make it into the KJV where it becomes “what I will,” but it does in the NIV and several other modern Bibles. It means, “how I wish.” It expresses a strong desire as a human.

Jesus then returned to lightheartedness with his punchline. the verb has a double meaning. It means “to start a fire,” but it also means “to fasten on.” How does fastening on relate to fire? We say something similar when we say that we want a fire to “catch.” But “fasten on” has a broader meaning than just a fire catching.

When we say that we want something to “catch on,” what are we saying? That we want it to become popular, to spread like wildfire. That is what Jesus is saying about the fire he is tossing over the earth, that he wishes he could see it spread. This is sad if we think about it. He knew that he was to die soon and that his death and resurrection was a necessary ingredient to its spread. How do we know that is what he meant? Because his death is the topic of his next verse.

Final Thoughts

This “catch on” sounds surprisingly modern, but we see a lot of idioms similar to those in today’s English in other languages from other eras. These are human ideas arising from our experiences in the world, which haven’t changed in basic ways in over 2,000 years. Today we might say “gone viral” about “memes” instead of “catch on,” but that is a current fad. 2,000 years from now, some variant of “catch on” or “fasten on” is more likely to describe ideas that spread.