Joppa is the modern city of Jaffa, the most important port in southern Palestine, about ten miles northwest of Lydda. Who was a believer translates a word which appears only here in the New Testament, meaning literally “a woman disciple.” Luke explains that her Aramaic name Tabitha means gazelle when translated into Greek; and the Good News Translation has sought to do for the English readers what Luke did for his Greek readers, that is, to explain the meaning of the name both in Aramaic and in Greek: named Tabitha … (her name in Greek is Dorcas, meaning a deer).

Technically, of course, this animal is a gazelle, not a deer, but such a technical distinction did not seem to be warranted in a translation such as Today’s English Version.

“She was full of good works and of the almsgiving which she was doing” is simply a Jewish way of saying she spent all her time doing good and helping the poor. Spent all her time is in many languages equivalent to “continually did good.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Acts of the Apostles. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1972. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .