The Greek that is typically transliterated as “Beelzebul” in English used to be transliterated in English and most other languages with a long tradition in Bible translation as Beelzebub, going back to the LatinVulgate translation that had used Beelzebub. St. Jerome likely had done that to correspond with the pronunciation of Baal Zebub (בַּעַל זְבוּב) of 2 Kings 1:2 where a Philistine god by that name is mentioned. The Hebrew name carries the derogative meaning “Baal (or: god) of flies” and is likely an ironic and humiliating misspelling of Baal Zebul with the meaning of “Baal (or: god) the Prince” (see Translation commentary on 2 Kings 1:2).
In popular German literature of the 14th through 17th century, the term “Beelzebock” was also used, a word with a similar sound, but with last and changed syllable carrying the meaning of “(billy) goat / ram,” the partial form of the devil in popular imagination. (Source: Jost Zetzsche — see also the sheep from the goats)
In languages that use Chinese characters, including Mandarin Chinese, Min Nan Chinese, Yue Chinese (Cantonese), or Hakka Chinese, the characters 別西卜 are used in Protestant translations (pronunciation in Mandarin: biéxību, in Cantonese: bit6 sai1 buk1, in Hakka phe̍t-sî-puk). That transliteration name has been used since at least 1850 in the Literary ChineseDelegates’ Version, likely because of the suitably negative meaning of the last character 卜 or “divination.” (The Catholic transliteration is 貝耳則步 / bèiěrzébù in Mandarin, without any particular meaning.)
In Western Bukidnon Manobo it is translated with Endedaman, the Manobo name for the ruler of the evil spirits (source: Western Bukidnon Manobo Back Translation) and in the German New Testament translation by Berger / Nord (publ. 1999) with Oberteufel or “chief devil.”
“The name of the god of Ekron in 2 Kings 1:2, Baal-zebub, may possibly mean ‘Lord of the fly,’ in other words the god who protected people from the sores and diseases caused by flies. However, the name may instead be related to the Ugaritic word zebul (𐎇𐎁𐎍), ‘the highest,’ and thus may have originally been Baal-zebul (𐎁𐎓𐎍. 𐎇𐎁𐎍), the Canaanite equivalent of ‘Most High Lord,’ but it was changed sarcastically by the people of Israel to Baal-zebub, ‘Lord of the fly.’ Because of the doubt about the proper derivation of the word, it is probably best to transliterate the name rather than try to translate it, and add a footnote as follows, ‘This name means ‘Lord of flies’ and may be a mocking corruption of the god’s real name Baal-zebul.’ (Source: All Creatures Great and Small: Living things in the Bible (UBS Helps for Translators) ).
The Greek and Hebrew terms that are translated as “redeem” or “redemption” in most English translations (see more on that below) are translated in Kissi as “buying back.” “Ownership of some object may be forfeited or lost, but the original owner may redeem his possession by buying it back. So God, who made us for Himself, permitted us to accept or reject Him. In order to reconcile rebellious mankind He demonstrated His redemptive love in the death of His Son on our behalf.
“The San Blas Kuna describe redemption in a more spiritual sense. They say that it consists of ‘recapturing the spirit.’ A sinful person is one in rebellion against God, and he must be recaptured by God or he will destroy himself. The need of the spirit is to be captured by God. The tragedy is that too many people find their greatest pleasure in secretly trying to elude God, as though they could find some place in the universe where He could not find them. They regard life as a purely private affair, and they object to the claims of God as presented by the church. They accuse the pastor of interfering with the privacy of their own iniquity. Such souls, if they are to be redeemed, must be ‘recaptured.'” (Source: Nida 1952, p. 138)
Click or tap here for more translations or “redeem” / “redemption”
In Ajië a term is used, nawi, that refers to the “custom of planting a small tree on land cursed either by the blood of battle or some calamity.” Clifford (1992, p. 83ff.) retells the story: “Maurice Leenhardt tells how he finally arrived at a term that would express ‘redemption.’ Previous missionaries had interpreted it as an exchange — an exchange of life, that of Jesus for ours. But in Melanesian thinking more strict equivalents were demanded in the exchanges structuring social life. It remained unclear to them how Jesus’ sacrifice could possibly redeem mankind. So unclear was it that even the natas [Melanesians pastors] gave up trying to explain a concept they did not understand very well themselves and simply employed the term “release.” So the matter stood, with the missionary driven to the use of cumbersome circumlocutions, until one day during a conversation on 1 Corinthians 1:30, [Melanesian pastor and Leenhardt’s co-worker] Boesoou Erijisi used a surprising expression: nawi. The term referred to the custom of planting a small tree on land cursed either by the blood of battle or some calamity. ‘Jesus was thus the one who has accomplished the sacrifice and has planted himself like a tree, as though to absorb all the misfortunes of men and to free the world from its taboos.’ Here at last was a concept that seemed to render the principle of ‘redemption’ and could reach deeply enough into living modes of thought. ‘The idea was a rich one, but how could I be sure I understood it right?’ The key test was in the reaction of students and natas to his provisional version. They were, he reports, overjoyed with the ‘deep’ translation.”
In Folopa, the translation team also found a deeply indigenous term. Neil Anderson (in Holzhausen 1991, p. 51) explains: “While I was explaining the meaning of the [concept] to the Folopa men, I could see their faces brighten. They said that this was a common thing among them: ‘If someone falls a tree and it tips to the wrong side, killing someone, the relatives of the injured party claim the life of the guilty party. But in order to save his life, his relatives make amends. Pigs, shells (which are still used as currency here) and other valuables are given to the relatives of the deceased as payment for the life of the guilty party. In this way he can live because others stand up for him.’ Full of joy, I began to utilize this thought to the difficult translation of the word ‘redemption.’ Mark 10:45 reads now, translated back from the Folopa: ‘Jesus came to make an atonement, by which he takes upon himself the punishment for the evil deeds of many. He came so that through his death many might be liberated.’ After working on this verse for half an hour, I read it to my friends. They became silent and moved their slightly bowed heads thoughtfully back and forth. Finally, one of them took the floor, ‘We give a lot to right a wrong. But we have never given a human being as a price of atonement. Jesus did a great work for us when he made restitution. Because he died, all of us now don’t have to bear the punishment we deserve. We are liberated.'”
In Samoan the translation is togiola which originally refers to a fine mat. John Bradshaw (in The Bible Translator 1967, p. 75ff. ) explains: “The rite of submission applies in cases of grave sin which demands an extreme punishment: offenses such as murder, adultery or disrespectful behavior towards a chief. Submission is made in expectation of forgiveness. The rite is normally enacted at dawn. The prisoner and his family, or even his whole village bow down in silence before the house of the chief or other offended party. The prisoner heads the group and is covered with a fine mat, offered as his ransom. In other words, he submits himself completely to the authority of those whom he has offended. Many such submissions have been successfully offered and received. Those inside the house will come out, and bring into it those offering submission. The priestly orators speak sweetly and all join in a meal. The fine mat is accepted, while the prisoner is set free and forgiven. He no longer goes in fear of retribution for his sin. (…) If now we turn to the relation between the believer and the Redeemer, we notice at once that the word togiola, literally the price of one’s life, was the word used to denote the fine mat with which the sinner covered himself in the rite of Submission. The acceptance of the togiola set free the prisoner. It was inevitable that togiola should render lutron, ransom, as in Matthew 20:28.”
“In Hebrew there are two terms, ga’al and padah, usually rendered ‘to redeem,’ which have likewise undergone significant changes in meaning with resulting obscurity and misunderstanding. Both terms are used in the Old Testament for a person being redeemed from slavery. In the case of padah, the primary emphasis is upon the redemption by means of payment, and in ga’al the redemption of an individual, usually by payment, is made by some relative or an individual of the same clan or society. These two words, however, are used in the Old Testament in circumstances in which there is no payment at all. For example, the redemption of Jews from Egypt is referred to by these two terms, but clearly there was no payment made to the Egyptians or to Pharaoh.
“In the New Testament a related problem occurs, for the words agorázō and exagorazó, meaning literally ‘to buy’ or ‘to buy back’ and ‘to buy out,’ were translated into Latin as redimo and into English normally as ‘redeem.’ The almost exclusive association of Latin redimo with payment became such a focal element of meaning that during the Middle Ages a theory developed that God had to pay the Devil in order to get believers out of hell and into heaven.
“As in the case of the Old Testament, New Testament contexts employing the Greek verb lutroó, literally ‘to redeem’ or ‘to ransom,’ do not refer primarily to payment but focus upon deliverance and being set free. But even today there is such a heavy tradition of the theological concept of payment that any attempt to translate lutroó as ‘to deliver’ or ‘to set free’ is misjudged by some as being heretical.” (Source: Nida 1984, p. 114f.)
The Hebrew that is translated in most English versions as “wild ox” was translated by the Ancient GreekSeptuagint translation as μονόκερως (monókeros) or “unicorn” (though it actually is the Greek word for “rhinoceros” — see below).
Bibles in the Protestant tradition also used an equivalent of that translation up into the early 20th century. This includes translations like the EnglishKing James Version/Authorised Version (unicorn), the German translation by Luther (up to and including the revision of 1912) (Einhorn), or the SwedishCharles XII Bible of 1686 (enhörningen).
Since translations of the Orthodox traditions tend to follow the Septuagint (see above), they also use an equivalent of “unicorn,” such as the Russian Synod translation with единорог (yedinorog).
Translations in the Catholic tradition tended to use an equivalent of “rhinoceros,” going back to the LatinVulgate’srinoceros. Modern Catholic translations that follow the Hebrew text now also use “wild ox” or an equivalent.
The influential Literary / Classical ChineseDelegates Version (publ. 1854) used sì (兕), a mythological Chinese creature that also only had one horn (see here ).
Click or tap here for the rest of the entry about “wild ox” in United Bible Societies’ All Creatures Great and Small: Living things in the Bible.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century re’em has been translated as “wild ox” in English versions, following the original suggestion made by Canon Tristram in the previous century. However, there are problems connected with this rendering. The usual justifications for this translation are a) that the Akkadian equivalent word rimu refers to the wild ox or Aurochs Bos primigenius, which was frequently hunted by Akkadian kings and b) that wild ox or aurochs fits the description of the wild untameable animal referred to in the Bible.
Both of these arguments have weaknesses from a zoological point of view and the linguistic argument is also debatable. Firstly, the aurochs hunted by the Akkadian kings was an animal found in high rainfall areas with forests. In historical times it was found only in the wooded areas of central and southeastern Europe Armenia (including the southern coastland of the Black Sea) and Mesopotamia. The only aurochs remains found in the land of Israel and the Arabian Peninsula date from the early Pleistocene Age. It is highly unlikely that this animal lived in Israel in biblical times.
Secondly, while the Akkadian rimu is usually translated as “wild ox”, the Ugariticrum has been translated by some scholars as “buffalo”, and the Old Arabic rim is usually translated as “oryx”. Both of these words are related to the Hebrew re’em. Some scholars have argued that the re’em is really the oryx.
Furthermore, while the wild aurochs was very large, dangerous, and strong, it was not really “untameable”. Its dependence on water made it fairly easy to capture in nets and it was domesticated very early. It is the ancestor of all short-horned European cattle. Ancient pictures carved in limestone found in the excavations at Kujunjik in Iraq show carts being pulled by cattle that look exactly the same as the aurochs pictured in hunting scenes from an earlier period.
An animal similar to the aurochs was hunted by early Egyptian kings but it had disappeared from Egypt as early as the reign of Rameses III (about 1190 B.C.), who hunted instead “wild ox” (probably the Cape buffalo) in forested areas of the Sudan, where there is no evidence that the aurochs ever lived. (A commemorative painting of one of these hunts clearly shows aurochs-like animals being hunted from chariots, but this may be artistic license or a traditional stereotype-the lions in similar paintings are certainly fanciful stereotypes.)
Among the many animal mummies found in Egypt there are a number of bubal or red hartebeest and Cape buffalo. Both of these animals fit the biblical description of “wild ox”, and the hartebeest certainly lived in Arabia and the land of Israel.
The Septuagint translates re’em as monokerōs which literally means “one-horned” (hence the KJV “unicorn”) but is the ancient Greek word for rhinoceros. This translation needs to be taken seriously, because of its early date. The rhinoceros would have been an animal known to the Jews, since it was found in parts of Egypt. The ancient naturalist, Strabo of Amasia, who lived in the early part of the first century A.D., describes a rhinoceros that he saw in Egypt and refers to another naturalist of the time who had also described this animal. A variety of rhinoceros was found in Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia at the time of the Exodus, and a second variety was found in Mesopotamia.
At the time of the Exodus then, the aurochs would have been found in the forests of southeast Europe, the far north of Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia, but not in Egypt, Canaan, the Arabian Peninsula, Sinai, or Syria. However, the oryx and the bubal hartebeest would have been plentiful and well known, and the Cape buffalo and rhinoceros would have been known too, at least by hearsay.
There is another aspect of the question that needs to be kept in mind. Throughout human history large, prominent animals have had symbolic importance, even in societies that would never have seen the animal. Thus the lion has been important in Chinese and British culture for centuries, but there is no evidence that lions have ever lived in China or Britain. Thus the aurochs, while it may be a rather improbable interpretation, cannot be ruled out entirely.
Four things can be said for certain about the re’em. It was a wild, untameable animal, it had horns, it was very strong, and it was appropriate to contrast or compare it with domestic cattle and with lions.
Aurochs: The Aurochs Bos primigenius, which is now extinct, was a very large animal, with prominent forward-pointing horns. It looked very similar to the bulls used in Spain for bull-fighting in modern times, but it was probably even larger. The bulls were dark brown or black, with a pale stripe down the spine, while the females were a lighter brown. The German zoos of Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt have been fairly successful in genetic engineering experiments that have been aimed at reintroducing the aurochs’ original genetic characteristics, by selective breeding from domestic cattle that have the required characteristics. The resulting animals seem to resemble closely the original aurochs.
Cape Buffalo: The Cape Buffalo Syncerus caffer is also a very large animal not as tall as the aurochs but heavier. It is found wherever there is adequate water supply all over sub-Saharan Africa. It prefers thick bush or riverine forest in which to take cover during the day. It has very thick horns that emerge from a broad boss on its forehead then sweep sideways and down before curving sharply upward toward the head. The males have thicker horns than the females. The skin is covered in short hair that varies from black to gray or brown and is usually covered with dry mud so that the buffaloes look the same color as the local soil.
Cape buffaloes live in large herds often numbering over five hundred animals. They are extremely strong cunning and fearless and are probably the most dangerous animals in Africa. Although they have become accustomed to man in some protected areas they are unpredictable and easily provoked. Unlike the Asian water buffalo or carabao the Cape buffalo has never been domesticated.
Rhinoceros: The rhinoceros found in Mesopotamia in biblical times was a subvariety of the Great Indian Rhinoceros Rhinoceros unicornis while the variety found in Egypt and Sudan would have been the Hook-lipped or Black Rhinoceros Diceros bicornis. The hook-lipped rhinoceros weighs up to 2000 kilograms (4400 pounds) and is about 1.7 meters (70 inches) tall at the shoulder. It has two horns above the nose, one behind the other, the front one growing over half a meter (20 inches) in length. They live in bushy country and feed on leaves and twigs. They are solitary animals with poor eyesight and are very aggressive. The great Indian rhinoceros was even larger and had a single horn.
Because of the uncertainty of identifying this animal, it is probably best to have an equivalent of “wild ox” or “wild bull” in the text and indicate in a footnote, each time the word is translated, that the word may mean “buffalo” and that the Septuagint has “rhinoceros”.
A problem in many countries is that using a phrase like “wild ox” suggests that this is a domestic ox that has gone wild. For this reason, it may be better to use a local name for a large strong, horned animal.
In Africa the obvious equivalent is the buffalo, and this choice is strengthened by the fact that re’em may even mean “buffalo”.
In the Indian subcontinent, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and western China, there is an animal (now nearly extinct) known as the Gaur Bibos gaurus. In Thailand it is called the ngua-kating, and in Malaysia, the seladang. It is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the “wild water buffalo”. This is a type of wild ox very similar to the aurochs. In the Himalayas and mountains of western China there is another smaller animal similar to a wild ox called the Takin Budorcas taxicolor. Another possibility in the Himalayas and Central Asia is an expression meaning “wild yak”.
In North America the Bison or American Buffalo Bison bison is the closest equivalent. Another possible equivalent in some Arctic regions is the Musk Ox Ovibos moschatus.
Elsewhere a transliteration or a word borrowed from a locally dominant language is a possible solution.
“A particularly interesting development in the history of Christianity [related to translation] took place with respect to the Greek term monogenés, literally, ‘only, unique, one of kind.’ It was used of Isaac as the son of Abraham [see Gen. 22:2], though Isaac was not the only son of Abraham, for he had a son Ishmael, and with a later wife Keturah, several sons. But Isaac was the only son of a particular kind, that is to say, the unique son of the promise. The term monogenés was translated into the LatinVulgate as unigenitus, meaning literally ‘only begotten’ [in English — or likewise traditionally in Mandarin Chinese: “dúshēng 獨 生,” Italian: “unigenito,” Spanish “unigénito,” or German: “eingeboren”] but in Greek the equivalent of ‘only begotten’ would have two n’s and not just one (monogennes). Nevertheless, the Latin misinterpretation of monogenés has constituted such a long tradition that any attempt to speak of Jesus as the ‘unique son of God’ rather than the ‘only begotten son’ is often announced as a case of blatant heresy.” (Source: Nida 1984, p. 114.)
In Waiwai, the Greek that is translated as “only begotten Son” in English in John 3:16 is translated as cewnan tumumururosa okwe, where the “particle okwe indicates dearness, and it must be included in Waiwai for the expression ‘only begotten Son’ to mean anything like what it means to God or to us as Christians.” (Source: Robert Hawkins (in The Bible Translator 1962, pp. 164ff. )
The Greek term that was translated by the LatinVulgate translation as Calvariæ or “skulls” was transliterated from that Latin translation in many European languages, including in the EnglishKing James and Douay-Rheims versions, as well as some early translations into French (Calvaire), Portuguese (Caveira), or Spanish (Calavera).
In French, calvaire has also become idiomatic for “ordeal,” “misery,” or “martyrdom.” (Source: Muller 1991, p. 82)
The Greek in Luke 1:28 that is translated as “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you” or similar in English is translated in the interconfessional ItalianCommon Language Version (Traduzione Interconfessionale in Lingua Corrente, publ. 2014) as Ti saluto, Maria! Il Signore è con te: egli ti ha colmata di grazia or “Hail, Mary! The Lord is with you; he has filled you with grace.”
Carlo Buzzetti (in The Bible Translator 1982, p. 243 ) explains: “The most famous Latin translation, of St. Jerome, reads: Ave gratia plena, Dominus tecum (‘Hail, woman full of grace, the Lord is with you’), and a great many later translations have been influenced by it. So nearly all the Italian Roman Catholic editions of the Gospel say: Ti saluto, piena di grazia. il Signore e con te. However the Italian protestant versions have avoided the formula piena di grazia (‘full of grace’). This expression does not seem to be the best translation of the Greek, and it implies an interpretation which can easily be confessional: the words piena di grazia could be understood as a description of Mary almost independent from God, whereas the Greek word kecharitomene is a passive form. For this reason we read Ben ti sia, o favorita; il Signore sia leco (old Diodati version) or Ti saluto, o favorita dalla grazia, il Signore e teco (Riveduta version), in which favorita (‘favored one’) is preferred as the equivalent of kecharitomene.
“Unfortunately, the word favorita doesn’t belong at all to the common language Italian of today; and the reader who knows it probably gets the wrong shade of meaning and wrong connotations from it. The same thing is true of other participles and adjectives: graziata, gratificata, graziosa … so the Italian translators of [the Common Language Version] decided to bring in the subject (God) which is hidden in the passive Greek form: and they produced the formula Dio ti ha colmata di grazia (‘God has filled you with grace’). There was no confessional difficulty with this expression; on the contrary, the agreement was general.”
The Hebrew and Greek pesach/pascha that is typically translated in English as “Passover” (see below) is translated in a variety of descriptive ways of various aspects of the Jewish festival. (Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight):
Umiray Dumaget Agta: “the celebration of the day of their being brought out of bondage”
(source for this and above: M. Larson / B. Moore in Notes on Translation February 1970, p. 1-125.)
Obolo: ijọk Iraraka — “Festival of Passing” (source: Enene Enene)
Yakan: “The festival of the Isra’il tribe which they call For-Remembering” (source: Yakan Back Translation)
Wolof: “Festival of the day of Salvation” (“the term ‘pass over’ brings up the image of a person’s crossing over a chasm after death”) (source: Marilyn Escher)
Bura-Pabir: vir kucelir fəlɓəla kəi — “time-of happiness-of jumping-over house”
Sabaot: Saakweetaab Keeytaayeet — “Festival of Passing-by” (source: Iver Larsen)
Language spoken in India and Bangladesh: “Festival of avoidance”
Vlax Romani: o ghes o baro le Nakhimasko — “the Day of the Passing”
Saint Lucian Creole: Fèt Délivwans — “Feast of Deliverance” (source: David Frank)
Finnish: pääsiäinen (“The term is very probably coined during the NT translation process around 1520-1530. It is connected to a multivalent verb päästä and as such refers either to the Exodus (päästä meaning “to get away [from Egypt]”) or to the end of the Lent [päästä referring to get relieved from the limitations in diet]. The later explanation being far more probable than the first.”)
Northern Sami: beas’sážat (“Coined following the model in Finnish. The Sami verb is beassat and behaves partly like the Finnish one. Many Christian key terms are either borrowed from Finnish or coined following the Finnish example.”)
Estonian: ülestõusmispüha — “holiday/Sunday of the resurrection” — or lihavõttepüha — “holiday/Sunday of returning of meat”
Karelian: äijüpäivü — “the great day” (“Here one can hear the influence of the Eastern Christianity, but not directly Russian as language, because the Russian term is Пасха/Pasha or Воскресение Христово/Voskresenie Hristovo, ‘[the day of] the resurrection of Christ,’ but the week before Easter is called as the great week.”) (Source for this and three above: Seppo Sipilä)
Russian (for Russian speaking Muslims): праздник Освобождения/prazdnik Osvobozhdeniya — “Festival of-liberation” (source: Andy Warren-Rothlin)
Kono: laaŋumɛ̃ɛ̃ or “skip over the person” (provisional term). Alesha Hagemeyer explains in this blog post that laaŋumɛ̃ɛ̃ is a play on the term laaɲámɛ̃ɛ̃ or “to skip over the water” which is traditionally used for the sacrifice of a sheep or a goat after the death of a family member. That term literally means “to skip over the water” so that “their loved one will pass over the water and enter the presence of God”
English: Passover (term coined by William Tyndale that both replicates the sound of the Hebrew original pesah — פסח as well as part of the meaning: “passing over” the houses of the Israelites in Egypt) — oddly, the English Authorized Version (King James Version) translates the occurrence in Acts 12:4 as Easter
Low German: Osterfest “Easter” (translation by Johannes Jessen, publ. 1933, republ. 2006)
Many Romance languages follow the tradition from Latin that has one term for both “Easter” and “Passover” (pascha). Portuguese uses Páscoa for both, Italian uses Pascha, and French has Pâque for “Passover” and the identically pronounced Pâques for “Easter.”
In languages in francophone and lusophone (Portuguese speaking) Africa, indigenous languages typically use the Romance word for “Easter” as a loanword and often transliterate pesach/pascha. In Kinyarwanda and RundiPasika is used, in Swahili and Congo SwahiliPasaka, and in LingalaPasika. In some cases, the transliteration of “Passover” is derived from the European language, such as Umbundu’sPascoa (from Portuguese) and Bulu’sPak (from French).
As John Ellingworth (in The Bible Translator 1980, p 445f. ) points out “in most contexts only the presence or absence of the definite article distinguishes them [in French la pâque for Passover and Pâques for Easter]. Since most African languages do not have definite articles, there remains no way to distinguish between the two terms where the general population has borrowed the word for Easter and the Bible translators have borrowed the word for Passover to use in their translation. Some even consider the references to [Passover] before the death of Christ as prophetic!”
The Hebrew phrase that literally means “urinating against the wall” and likely refers to a pejorative, dog-like meaning of “male” or “man” (see translations with a Hebraic voice [1 Samuel 25:22]) is translated verbatim in the LatinVulgate, the GreekSeptuagint and early English translations (Tyndale, King James / Authorised Version, Douay-Rheims) but in most other languages and versions with a term that simply refers to “man” or “male.”
