After Jesus had entered the water, God’s Sacred Breath entered Jesus to fill and indwell him, so he followed his voice into an area where all noise was cut off. He went without food to worship for as many days and nights as two people have digits, and his hunger ate him. There his soul was tested by the head of the worldlings.

Does this sound vaguely familiar? You may recognize the passage as the first two verses of the fourth chapter of Luke — the beginning of one account of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness, but it’s been translated with an amalgamation of terminology from eleven different languages that renders a recognizable story strange and somewhat startling.

Some terminology might seem curious to English speakers, but these phrases are all drawn from real Bibles read by and for real people with real Christian faith.

This familiar story of Jesus’s temptation is told in all three of the synoptic gospels and holds a special place in how we view and think of Jesus, especially at this time of year during the 40-day season of Lent when many of us also fast or undertake other spiritual practices.

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