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It can all be very confusing and that is why words matter. A common language is critical because without it nothing we express has any chance to offer shared meaning. Words matter and so does vernacular. How does the ordinary person speak? What does the everyday man believe a word means? And when we look back and study or even translate the words of a people or culture not our own, what terminology were they using when they engaged with the subject matter in which we now have interest? And if you are the one responsible for transmitting meaning across time and cultures, you must be careful to consider what the words meant to those for whom you’ve taken the authority to represent.
“The cat got my tongue” may mean something very specific to you, but if you preach to another people from a different culture who speak a different language, it’s not safe to assume a direct translation of “cat” and “tongue” will get the job done, if you suddenly find yourself short on words. Ah, there’s another one, “short on words!” Maybe, “the thief stole my voice” is what they would understand to mean the same as “the cat got my tongue.” And that is precisely the point: thief replaces cat; stole replaces got; and voice replaces tongue—same meaning, completely different vernacular.
Can you imagine how often that happens in Bible translations? Just listen to this. “For not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified.” How does that sit with your current understanding of the path to eternal redemption according to good Christian doctrine? “For by grace you have been saved through faith; …it is the gift of God, not of works.” Both of these phrases are credited to the same author, Paul. Yet, moments later in the same letter where he claimed “the doers of the law shall be justified,” he wrote: “Therefore by the works of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” And in the same letter he wrote, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; …it is the gift of God, not of works,” he continued with, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”
Don’t you think it would be a good idea to understand a Jewish man’s vernacular in the first century when we contrast, in the English language, “doers of the law and works of the law?” One paves the way to eternal redemption; one doesn’t. “The cat got your tongue?” Well, on a topic this important, words and vernacular are the difference between life and death!
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