This page contains words which need further explanations.
This little explanation is pinned at the top (out of alphabetical order), because it’s quite a wide issue that affects quite a bit of the way that the OET phrases things.
First a little explanation: In the New Testament Greek there’s a grammatical construction (called the genitive, and it’s marked with suffixes on the words involved) that allows the source or possessor of a noun to be expressed, e.g., to say the ‘the house of God’ or ‘the right_hand of_him’ or ‘the God of_the fathers of_us’. Note that the source or possessor typically follows the head noun in Greek. (You will see these kinds of expressions a lot in the OET LV because the Literal Version intentionally tries to follow each word of the Koine Greek very closely.)
Note also that of phrases can be ambiguous, such as ‘the love of God’ (which would require clues from the surrounding context to know if it’s talking about someone’s love for God or the love that God has for someone or something).
You should also note that in regular, modern English as spoken in the public arena, we tend to put possessives before the head noun, so taking the above examples we might get ‘God’s house’, ‘his right hand’, and ‘the God of our fathers’ (or even ‘our fathers’ God’).
However, because of the ways that both Bible translation and English itself have evolved over the centuries, our Bibles tend to have lots of literal phrases that might sound unnatural to newcomers, but long-time Bible readers have become so accustomed to them that we tend to fail to even notice their unnatural and/or archaic nature.
The following extracts are all taken from Mark 1 out of the NIV Bible that was first translated in 1973, and then revised in 1978, 1984, and, more recently, in 2011:
The aim here is not to criticise the NIV, and certainly if you compared Mark 1 with the KJV you’d find many more examples there that have been made more natural in the NIV. Rather we’re just trying to explain why the OET RV might sound quite informal or even ‘colloquial’ to you—it’s because we’ve made an effort to translate the Bible into our own language that we speak every day—not the quaint-sounding word order of the literal Greek or of five-hundred year old English that feels more devout or ‘religious’ to some.
And if you didn’t read our introduction yet, the reason that we’ve wanted to translate the Bible into our own modern English is that we want to make it easier for you to share it with others.
The remainder of these glossary words are listed in English alphabetical order…
The Greek word translated ‘angel’ really means a messenger or delegate. In fact, ‘angel’ is a transliteration of the Greek, not a translation. The translators have to decide from the context if it’s referring to a human or to a supernatural being (typically dressed in shining white). Sometimes (e.g., Rev 1:20) we don’t really know which of the two is meant.
Missionary (literally sent-out one) would be the natural translation of the Greek word (ἀπόστολος), but that’s not always what it’s used for in the “New Testament”. Sometimes it’s used as a synonym for the close disciples when they were sent out (e.g., see Mark 6:30). Other times it seems to be used for church authorities, and it’s often used for that today, although not generally used at all outside of church language.
If you ‘believe’ someone, it usually means that you consider that what they just said wasn’t a lie. But if you ‘believe in’ someone, that’s different—it’s often to do with capability, i.e., usually that they’re able to do what they’re about to embark on, e.g., believing in a child that’s learning to drive, or an engineer trying to solve a difficult problem.
So what do the New Testament writers mean when they write about ‘believing in Jesus’? In most cases, they’re talking about ‘believing that Jesus is the messiah’, or in other words, ‘believing that Jesus is authentically sent from heaven and doing God’s work’. This can be clearly seen when Martha responds to Jesus’ statement about those who ‘believe in me’.
Because belief in a coming messiah is not a basic staple of our modern culture, sometimes we need to help our readers know what was at stake as people of those times either rejected or ‘believed in’ Jesus.
While it is true that the word disciple (μαθητής) can probably be understood by most modern readers, it’s the concept more than the word that people aren’t really familiar with these days. Some do indeed go to the East and place themselves under the teaching of various gurus, but we wouldn’t usually use the term disciple for an intern in a church. The term is complicated when it’s used in the Bible for thousands of Jesus followers, and then used for the selected twelve close followers, and sometimes for other size groups in-between. So the Readers’ Version has elected to use followers most of the time, and the word apprentices or trainees (still to be decided) for the twelve who stuck more closely with Jesus. At least modern readers understand the work of an apprentice who works for the master tradesman who takes responsibility for their work, even if much of the actual teaching is done away at a block course in an institution these days.
In the biblical languages and cultures, they often used the term for ‘father’ to refer to any of their male ancestors. Thus Abraham was considered the ‘father’ of the Jews. We can use the term to mean ‘founder’ in English, e.g., ‘the father of jazz’, but don’t usually use it for ancestors.
It’s not common to hear on the street about someone being ‘glorified’ and also difficult to find a single synonym that captures the original meaning. This leaves us with three main choices:
Sadly (because we ourselves recognise that it’s not ideal), we’ll often choose the latter compromise in the Readers’ Version.
Oh, what does the word ‘holy’ mean to the average person in the 2020s? On the street, we mostly hear it used as part of an exclamation (often along with a word for excrement or other profanity)!
To the more serious reader, ‘holy’ seems to be associated with purity, perfection, and sinlessness, and even with a halo. So the ‘holy apostles’ (typical translation found in Eph. 3:5) weren’t necessarily any more perfect or sinless than us—in fact it’s quite misleading because that is NOT the root meaning of the Greek word which is closer to ‘different’, ‘separated’, or ‘set aside for a special purpose’.
Is there a better word, perhaps a synonym that we could use that would convey the right meaning? (We want to avoid misconceptions that have lead to concepts like ‘Saints’ in the Roman church. It’s so easy to wrongly think that somehow those now deceased were somehow more pure or sinless than us.)
Some of the words used in the Readers’ Version include: ‘dedicated (ones)’, and ‘pure’.
Please be sure to read about ‘holy’ above first.
We notice that the term ‘Holy Spirit’ is almost used like a name, with users often not really considering the meaning of the term, and possibly not even able to define it well in their own words.
Because of the mismatch of cultures, the Readers’ Version has made the decision to downplay the word ‘holy’, often referring to ‘God’s spirit’ or using ‘pure’ in other contexts. We acknowledge that many will find this inadequate, but we feel that words that have lost their cultural meaning are also inadequate, so there’s no ideal solution.
In our modern, Western culture, we don’t really have the ancient concept of our lives being very much in the hands of our king or lord or master or boss or owner. In general, our boss only has power over us for certain hours of the week, and no person in our mostly egalitarian culture considers anyone else to be their ‘master’.
On the other hand, in churches you will hear a lot of talk about ‘the Lord’, but we suspect that it’s mostly only jargon or cliche because few of us can imagine a single person (or deity) in a position of the power of life or death over us.
Because of this mismatch of cultures, the OET has made the decision not to use the word ‘lord’ or ‘Lord’, and chosen the word ‘master’, while not ideal, to at least provoke more thought about what the Biblical concept might mean. (‘Boss’ was rejected as being too informal.) Sometimes too, we will simply use ‘God’ or his name ‘Yahweh’ where it seems to fit better. Remember that the Jewish people traditionally also say the word ‘Lord’ as a substitute for Yahweh, the name of God, in the Hebrew scriptures (although that’s not a Biblical command—in fact it seems to make God’s revelation of his name rather pointless).
In ancient days, if a group of horse riders turned up at your house and said, “We’ve come to arrest you in the name of King Henry!”, they meant that they have come with the authority of the king. The name ‘Henry’ has no particular power in its syllables. And of course, the person that we refer to as ‘Jesus’ was never ever referred to by those particular syllables when he walked on this earth. So too, sometimes when we read about the name of Jesus, it might not only be referring to his actual name (which likely differed depending on whether it was a Jew or a Roman or a Greek speaking), but also referring to his authority, for example his authority over demons. Thus when praying for healing, it’s not necessarily productive to shout “in the name of Jesus” over and over (not least because that was never his actual name). What if the traffic officer shouted, “Prime-minister, prime-minister” over and over again in order to convince you that they have authority from the government to issue you a speeding ticket? No, you muffle your response because you know that the authority to issue tickets or instant fines is part of their job description. Perhaps it might be more helpful to consider how you would pray if you were employed by Jesus and believed that in your job description, he has given you his authority to command these certain things.
P.S. Look in the Literal Version to see how to more properly pronounce the names of Biblical characters.
It’s important that you don’t picture a Roman Catholic or an Anglican or an Orthodox priest as you read the Bible. Remember that most of the priests mentioned in the Bible are Jewish priests, and had their own unique set of traditions.
John’s gospel account typically starts with “In the beginning was the Word…” but which word was it? “Tree?” “Apple?” “Snake?” Of course it’s not talking about the normal meaning of the word word, but an old-fashioned, religious use of the word as John’s account later refers to Jesus the Messiah. But Jesus isn’t a word like the words on this page, but it refers to something totally different. In fact, the meaning of Greek λόγος (‘logos’—but not the plural of logo), more likely refers to a speech, message, statement, or account and very rarely refers to a single word. In other words, it would be extremely rare for modern speaker to use the word word to describe a message: “The president read out a long word at the stadium opening ceremony.” Never! So the OET breaks tradition and tries to give a modern translation of what the Bible writers wrote.
These web pages are a very preliminary preview into a work still in progress. The OET is not yet finished, and not yet publicly released, but we need to have it available online for easy access for our checkers and reviewers. If you’re reading this and have questions that aren’t discussed here, please do contact us by email. Also if there’s something that we didn’t explain in this glossary, or didn’t explain very well. Thanks.
See also the Introduction and the FAQs.
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