How amazing would it have been to be one of Jesus' followers. I can't assume that I would get picked to be one of the elite (not that the twelve had much of a track record to earn such an honor), but maybe I could at least have applied for position among the 72 that he sent out in Luke 10. I can imagine the excitement that rushed across their lips as they gave their enthusiastic report, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name!" Sharing in their joy, Jesus responds by saying "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven…" Wow, what great victories those apostles must have had the privilege of being a part of!
Although my level of rejoicing certainly has likely not exceeded that of those 72 apostles, a recent event in the translation office sent me into a similar state of elation. After all, we too, in a very literal sense, "saw Satan fall."
Those of you who receive our prayer updates know that we have repeatedly requested divine intervention in making the final key term decisions before publishing Luke's gospel. After months of revisited conversations, the list was whittled down to just three pesky little words (holy, baptism and the name of Satan) which at times divided the translation team in some very unhelpful ways. Each one had very different issues driving the discussion, very different barriers we faced, and very different emotionally-charged opinions among the translators, all of which had led us to repeatedly postpone their discussions in the hopes of solutions to come. Now, with the publishing of Luke on our doorstep, postponement was no longer an option…the days of decision had come.
Holy: As we shared in our July 2013 newsletter – "The Evolution of Holiness" – the discussion of this key term beautifully reveals the challenge of Bible translation as well as the significant impact our choice of words can have on the Gmz church, the Gmz faith, and the Gmz language. If you haven't read that article/story and want to, send us an email and we'll forward it to you. The short version is basically that there is NO Gmz word that completely overlaps semantically with the biblical concept of holiness. However, there is one word, makooçama, which has some overlap. My advice to the team was to use this word in Scripture, even when it doesn't work perfectly right now. By doing this, the word itself, and the Gmz language will be stretched and shaped by the biblical contexts to the point where, years down the road, this word makooçama will carry a much more biblical concept of holiness. Language is fluid and always changing, why not grab a board and ride that wave? My advice was seconded by our project's consultant, a former translator himself, who had done this very thing n his mother tongue some 15-20 years ago and seen firsthand the unfolding of this societal vocabulary development. And so, after almost two years of wrestling with this term, two of the translators were convinced that makooçama was worth a try. With the third only in mild disagreement, we inked our decision once and for all. And so, our remaining key term list was down to two. More on those in an upcoming post.
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