by Evie Polsley, marketing manager Tyndale Bibles
I live in the Chicago area, and there are certain common experiences and ideas that are understood when I talk to fellow Chicagoans. For instance, when someone starts talking about “the Ike” without any further explanation, I know they are talking about the Eisenhower Expressway that goes into the city from the west. It’s also called I-290. It’s always busy (even at 3 a.m.), and there will be a backup around the Austin exit. This is context that I know because it’s part of my everyday experience.
I’m sure you have places and things in your life that don’t require additional explanation for listeners who share common experiences, places, and activities. This was true in Bible times as well. When Jesus spoke to the crowds, some references he made were simply understood because they were part of the everyday lives and shared experiences of his audience. But for us, who aren’t Jews living in a Roman-dominated world, what was common knowledge can easily get lost in the centuries of separation and cultural differences.
This is an area where meaning-based translations are extremely helpful. A meaning-based translation sees and translates the words of the Bible text through the lens of the Bible’s contexts—culture, politics, geography, literary genre, and other elements of common knowledge for the original hearers. Accounting for the ancient contexts in translation helps ensure that the text’s meaning won’t be missed by readers who aren’t experts in the Bible’s world. As one of our translators says, “We’re not just translating words, we’re translating worlds.”
We received a great question from a reader about a choice the NLT Bible Translation Committee made when translating the story of the Good Samaritan.
Reader’s Question: When I checked Luke 10:30 in the NLT, I saw that the victimized man was described as Jewish. I saw that the ESV described him as just “a man.” Interesting. So I went to my online parallel Bibles and found that all the versions except NLT describe him as “a man” or “a certain man.” Is there any particular reason why the NLT identifies him as Jewish?
Answer from Mark Norton, a member of the NLT Bible Translation Committee: This is a good question. The NLT’s approach here involves our reading the text in its context, rather than being just a simple translation of the wording in the Greek text. Though the Greek doesn’t explicitly identify the wounded man as Jewish, there are good reasons to presume that Jesus (and his listeners) would have had a Jewish person in mind.
Jesus was telling a parable with a radical surprise in it, and that surprise had a cultural and racial dimension to it. His listeners would have assumed that a traveler on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho was Jewish. Why? The Jerusalem–Jericho road was the primary route Jews used to travel between Judea and Galilee. There are several reasons for this. Though the shortest route to Galilee went straight north from Jerusalem through Samaria, tensions between the Jews and Samaritans led to Jewish travelers feeling unwelcome and unsafe there. It was also a rough, mountainous route. The alternate route (and the route most taken) went east from Jerusalem down to Jericho, then north up the Jordan Valley. The road between Jerusalem to Jericho was also fairly mountainous and it made the journey longer, but then the journey north from Jericho to Galilee followed the Jordan River, which provided a good water source and was relatively flat.
There would have been few Samaritans on the Jerusalem–Jericho road. If Samaritans wanted to go to Jericho for trade, they likely would have taken one of their own roads to the Jordan River and traveled the Jordan Valley south to Jericho, avoiding Judea altogether. The Samaritan hero in the story would have been an exception to the rule.
Another reason for assuming the wounded man was Jewish is that Jesus didn’t identify the race of any of the characters in the story—until the Samaritan. Here is the radical surprise in Jesus’ definition of the term neighbor. The person who culturally and historically had every reason not to stop was the one who stopped to help the wounded man. If the wounded man had also been a Samaritan, it would have undermined the truth that Jesus was teaching, and no one would have been surprised at the attitudes of the priest and the Temple assistant, who might readily ignore a wounded Samaritan.
The Bible Translation Committee (along with many other commentators) think that identifying the wounded man as Jewish is supported by the historical, cultural, geographic, and literary context. When translating the meaning of a text with clarity from one language to another, translators must account for contextual issues—not just word-for-word equations. This is clearly the case here. After close review, the NLT scholars saw the best equivalent for the literal “a certain man” to be “a Jewish man.” It is what the original listeners would have understood Jesus to be saying as he told the story. May we all embrace Jesus’ call to pause our busy lives to help our neighbors in need, no matter their race or class. This is essential for all who claim to follow the way of Jesus.