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.

Read the rest of the article on Bible Gateway .

“English readers are blessed when it comes to Bible translations.”

This statement on its own could mean several different things. It could mean that Bibles translated into English are better than those translated into other languages. Another possible meaning could be that English as a language is more qualified than other languages to express the meaning of the Bible. Or it might mean that there are a lot more translations in English than in any other language.

It might be disappointing for some to hear it, but the first and second explanations are simply not true. There are excellent English translations of the Bible, and there are excellent translations in other languages. English is equally equipped to translate the original languages — and equally limited in finding just the right words — as other languages around the world.

The third explanation is true, though. No language has produced as many different translations of the Christian scriptures as English. Bible Gateway has dozens of the most popular English versions — and even that barely scratches the surface of the 900 or so partial or complete English translations.

In addition to this embarrassment of riches, yet another resource for readers of English ties in with the first and second reasons to emphasize how our cup overflows.

See the rest of this article right here .

I recently celebrated my 59th birthday during an especially debilitating flare-up of multiple sclerosis, my unwelcome companion of three decades. Though I can still take my daily beach walks with my dingo, I now use a cane to propel myself through the sand. And I find myself musing on questions that haven’t plagued me since my late adolescence: Who am I? What is my purpose in life? What do I have to offer the world with my unique set of limitations? Where do I fit in to this world?

It’s an age-old human question, honed to obsession in the 21st century: Who am I? But though it permeates our culture now, we don’t have a monopoly on the question. For proof of the importance of identity, look no further than the genealogy that launches the Gospel of Matthew, where the writer lays out a historical resume to prove Jesus’ identity. Then, as now, questions of identity and belonging are essential.

When Jesus asks his disciples the divinely existential question of who the people and then the disciples think he is, his essential question is also all about identity—Jesus’ identity, Peter’s identity, and ultimately our identity as Christians.

The disciples report that people (anthrōpoi) see Jesus (huios tou anthrōpou or “Son of man/humanity” in Jesus’ question) in the context of figures from the past, but Peter recognizes Jesus as someone who melds the past and the future into the present time: the long-awaited Messiah who was and is to come has indeed arrived. One who, Peter clarifies, is also “the Son of the living God.”

We don’t know if the writer of Matthew was familiar with the letter to the Hebrews and its thundering proclamation that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31), but he most certainly was intimately familiar with the Hebrew Bible. In the Hebrew Bible, the phrase “the living God” often carries the sense that this deity is to be feared by those who are not on his side. As Moses asks the people, “For who is there of all flesh that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the fire, as we have, and lived?” (Deut. 5:26).

See the rest of this lectionary right here.

For another perspective on the same text see Losing puns in translation (Matthew 16:13-20).

The article “10 Biblical Terms I Wish Christians Had in English” that uses content from the Translation Insights & Perspectives tool was translated and published in Indonesian by Christianity Today. See here.

Pentecost reveals a God who understands that language is more than communication.

Just days after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit arrives, and with him, the apostles’ ability to speak in other languages. Diasporic visitors from as far away as today’s Iraq, Libya, and Italy suddenly can hear the gospel in their mother tongues. Hearing about Jesus in this intimate way surprises and amazes the listeners in Jerusalem and viscerally reinforces the personal nature of Jesus’ mission. (The fact that these visitors likely understood Jerusalem’s prevailing languages of Greek or Aramaic further underscores this.)

Yet the church was slow to adopt this message of Pentecost when it came to translating Scripture. Yes, they translated the Bible, but predominantly into Latin, Koine Greek, Ge’ez, Coptic, or Church Slavonic—languages that, over time, became the domain of just a few.

This first changed during the Reformation, and then again with the advent of Bible societies in the 19th century and with translation organizations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators in the 20th century. Today, more than 3,500 languages have at least a portion of the Bible translated into their language (a huge jump from about 2,000 languages just 20 years ago!).

The explosion of modern Bible translations amplifies the ongoing story of Pentecost, a grace that becomes most apparent when we’re able to unearth the riches of these translations and share their treasures beyond their original target audiences.

A couple of those gems can be found in Acts 2:4, the verse that reports on the lifting of that language barrier: “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Then they began to speak in other languages which the Holy Spirit made them able to speak” (NLV).

You can read the rest of the article right here.