Holy Week Through the Eyes of the Languages of the WorldSample

After Jesus' jubilant entry into Jerusalem, he sets his sight on publicly establishing who he is by reclaiming the temple.

"Temple"?

From the influential Latin Vulgate translation of the fourth century onward, most languages with a long tradition in Bible translation use only one word—"temple"—to describe two words in Greek—hieron and naos—the temple as a whole and the inner, holy parts of the temple. Languages with a shorter tradition of Bible translation are in a privileged position here because they tend to follow the Greek more closely in this case, like in Shipibo-Conibo, a language spoken in Peru, which uses "God's house" for the temple as a whole and "deep in God's house" for the inner place.

This distinction becomes important in passages like John 2, when after the first account of the cleansing of the temple (hieron—or "house of God" in Kituba, spoken in Democratic Republic of Congo), Jesus predicts that he will rebuild the temple (naos—or "place of holiness of house of God" in Kituba) in three days. It's that place of holiness, the naos, that Jesus uses as a metaphor for his body.

After clearing the house of God, John reports that Jesus sits down to teach in a way that “amazes” the people. Other languages also have strong words for describing the crowd's amazement. In Southern Bobo Madaré of Burkina Faso they "shook" in response, in Citak, spoken in Indonesia, they "stood with their mouth open," and in Bulu of the Bulu people of Cameroon, they "ceased to think with the heart." The "spellbound" audience in Luke's gospel was "pulled in like fish" by his message in Mairasi, a language of 3,000 speakers in Indonesia.

May we be pulled in by Jesus' message as we continue to follow him on his journey toward Easter this week.