Behold, I stand at the door and cough

I found myself in a classroom with 15 other students listening to a man tell of his experience in Bible translation. Every detail sounded crazy... and crazy exciting. Who wouldn't want to step alone into a foreign culture and have the joy of pointing to a rock until a native realizes that you want to learn their word for rock. Then point to a house and a tree until the native realizes that you are trying to learn their language! They are probably so excited that you have come to learn their language, but that barely makes the task any easier.

Soon I was face to face with the opportunity to see if I could do the same. In a smaller group, I found myself with a recent Myanmar refugee who was told to not speak or give ear to the few words of English that he did know. With gestures and words we figured out how to exchange names, but even that was slightly expected. As we went off track, things became more complicated. I didn't even know how to ask what an item was, let alone abstracts like "God," "love" and "the renewing of your mind."

As the week went on, I put more facts and ideas into my thinking cap. I was faced with the issues of translation that I've always taken for granted. How do you translate the knocking of Christ (Revelation 3) in a culture that doesn't knock on the door? Some cultures cough when they approach another's house. "Behold I stand at your door and cough?" Maybe explanation would be better: "Behold I stand at the door and seek to gain entrance by knocking, a cultural habit exercised by the action of a closed fist pounding on a door with the knuckles to produce a striking sound." Your Bible is now twice as long, and the book of John is as gripping of a narrative as the begottens of Leviticus. Even then you haven't even begun to address the readability of the Bible in the culture. I'm not talking about a paraphrase dumbing down, but an honest reflection that "thee" and "thou" is as inspired as your Biblical table of contents, and the average person would not care to habitually read from a Greek-English interlinear Bible which purposefully gives no attention to English word order. Then you've got a significant portion of the world to which Matthew 28:3 says very little. There is no way to know how white your sins are washed if you have no idea what snow is. Do you instead translate: "white as coconut meat?" What about the cultures that don't even have metaphors? Would we dare try to translate the Bible without metaphors? It may seem an obvious and resounding "NO" is in order until you consider the English parallels. What if every Biblical narrative started with "Once upon a time..." We'd consider it all myth. Yet a simple word choice of the translator gave us "And it came to pass..." for our sake! I have realized a bit this week how much I take for granted. I wouldn't know squat about the symbolism of Christ as the sacrificial lamb if it were not for the teaching that accompanies the text. I wouldn't know what the festival of booths was if it were not for this last semester in Israel.

The Jews responded joyfully to the call of YHWH. In some sense, one could argue that they weren't primarily excited about salvation, heaven, or faith that moves mountains. They were excited that God had chosen to reveal Himself to them! They had the privilege to know His Name and His Torah/Teaching. I've seen videos of people with a similar response to the idea that God speaks their language. Is it any wonder that people groups would doubt the omnipotent power and demand of Christ on their lives when it seems that YHWH does not even speak their language?

Until a great multitude that no one can number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, stand before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, crying with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God Who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!" (Revelation 7)