King of Kings and Lord of Lords

A song we used to sing went like this:

King of kings and Lord of lords, glory, hallelujah!
King of kings and Lord of lords, glory, hallelujah!
Jesus, prince of peace, glory, hallelujah!
Jesus, prince of peace, glory, hallelujah!

My question for you Bible Translation types is this, when does 'Lord' in the New Testament refer to Jesus, and when does it refer to God the Father? Why is this important? Because in some languages there is no good word for 'lord', as they didn't have them in their culture (only elder brothers, fathers, uncles i.e. respected elders). Also, it can unhelpfully blur the distinction between Jesus the Messiah and the LORD of the Old Testament:

'Translations which fail to distinguish the divine name from the messianic title also prevent the reader from recognizing important passages where the divine name is applied to Jesus. Examples are Rom. 10:13; 1 Cor. 1:31; 10:17; Heb. 1:10; 1 Pet. 3:14–16; and perhaps 2 Cor. 3:16. If more English translations of the NT made even the small distinction indicated by ‘Lord’ versus ‘Lord’, as is done in many English translations of the Old Testament, then the readers would be able to see that the divine name is being applied to Jesus in these passages.' (Brown and Samuel, 2003).

So, how do we know the difference? Sometimes it is clear from context e.g. Lord of lords refers to the Lamb in Revelation 17:14 and the Word of God in Revelation 19:16 respectively. But are there any clues in the Greek? According to Rick Brown and Christopher Samuel's 2003 article 'the meaning of kurios in the NT' there may be:

http://www.sil.org/sil/roster/brown_richard.htm

Apparently kurios often refers to the divine name, the KURIOS/YaHWeH of the Old Testament, especially in quotes from the LXX. Ho kurios often refers to Jesus the Messiah. (For an explanation of Yahweh, see http://www.justforcatholics.org/d03.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism - note that Adonai and Kurios are Hebrew and Greek respectively for 'Lord').

Now, you budding exegetes, see what you can find in Logos or Bibleworks or whatever Bible software you use and get back to me on this one. We'd love to find out so we can translate the term correctly whenever we find it in the NT!

David Gray

On the Danger of Syncretism?

As we hand over more and more to national colleagues to do Bible Translation and be in charge of their own exegesis there is always going to be a danger of syncretism. The pendulum can swing from appropriate contextualisation to syncretistic approaches that over-emphasize local, traditional beliefs. To avoid this there is a temptation to choose translators and consultants who are demonstrably ‘sound’ – they can sign all the correct doctrinal statements, and have been trained by all the right (Western-funded[1]) theological institutions, as well as having been instructed by missionary trainers and consultants on how to do dynamic translations that make truth clear and simple. This would be fine if it were not for the fact that there are some much more subtle influences coming into play. In India, for instance, scriptures, to sound true, must be beautiful literature written in poetic form. If we, as outsiders, over-stress the clear, simple (propositional truth?) meaning of scripture we can do violence to the national translator’s desire to write beautiful literature that will be read and accepted by many as scripture. The missionary-advised translation is useful, but only for evangelism. As soon as a church is in existence the believers crave a translation that reads and sounds like a holy book. And so it is that the church starts a second translation project, perhaps producing a high-literary style and somewhat more word-for-word translation that is more useful for preaching, teaching, and Bible-studies.

It may be worth pointing out that within the Bible there are a variety of literary forms, and some books ought not to be high style. The gospel of Mark is one of those. But Psalms, Proverbs, the Prophets, John’s gospel, and many other parts of the Bible can be written in beautiful language and still reflect the genre of the original scriptures. This is probably the best way to go – choosing to work on the books that are high in style first, so that the people and language group accept these books as scripture, before moving onto books that ought really to be in a simple straight-forward style.

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[1] These will often have a particular bias that is based on some kind of Western philosophy.