Language Studies

Aramaic Thoughts

Idioms in the Bible - Part 13

In John 3, Jesus makes the statement, "You must be born again." Lamsa saw this as an idiom that meant one needed to "become like a child; to start all over." In doing so, Lamsa has misunderstood the statement almost as badly as Nicodemus did. Nicodemus took Jesus literally and asked, "Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?" The key to the passage is that Jesus has used a Greek word (anothen) that means both "again, anew" and "from above." The standard lexicon of New Testament Greek says of this passage that is "is purposely ambiguous and means both born from above and born again." It is a word play that is possible in Greek, but is not possible in Aramaic or Syriac. The Aramaic/Syriac word can have only the sense of "again, anew." At this point Lamsa has perhaps been influenced too much by the Syriac in his understanding of the passage.

Jesus spoke with deliberate ambiguity in order to point out to Nicodemus the problem of his own horizontal thinking, and to draw his attention upward. As the passage continues, Jesus explains his meaning to Nicodemus, emphasizing the necessity of the "from above" element (that is, by the Spirit). It is worthy of note that in the Gospel of John more than any of the other gospels, Jesus’ hearers misunderstand him. It is also important to see that when Jesus’ hearers misunderstand him, they always take him too literally. Thus Nicodemus thinks Jesus means climbing back into the womb. The Jews think Jesus means cannibalism (6:52). The crowds seek Jesus because they want literal bread (6:26). The woman at the well thought Jesus had another (magical) well that he was getting water from (4:15). It is a lesson to all of us that we should think not so much in materialistic terms, but more spiritually.

In 2Cor 2:12, Paul said that "a door was opened for me." This is indeed a figure of speech meaning "an opportunity came," as Lamsa notes. One would think that such a figure of speech would be plain to any reader, but a survey of modern translations shows that not to be the case. The ESV translates it literally as "a door was opened for me" as does the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB). The New Century Version renders it "the Lord gave me a good opportunity there." The Contemporary English Version says, "I found that the Lord had already prepared the way." The New Living Translation (2nd ed.) reads, "the Lord opened a door of opportunity for me." Even the Revised English Bible says, "an opportunity awaited me for serving the Lord." In other words, the modern renderings assume that the reader will not understand the figure of speech, so they render it in a literal fashion. It leaves me with the question, if a person cannot understand so plain a figure of speech, how much of the Scripture can he or she really be expected to understand? Another way of putting it is that it seems to me that sometimes the modern versions assume too much ignorance on the part of readers.

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