Revelation is a disclosure of something not possible to know without that disclosure. One man reveals to another a wish to travel to the mountains. The first man could not know of the wish without the spoken revelation. God reveals his plans and the plans become known through revelation. Words are revelations.
As we utter a word, we open the gate to our thoughts. Words as they function in languages are recipes of content nuanced by culture, time, and context. This is why we debate the meaning of something said by a character in a novel or by a public figure making a statement. We ask in literature classes in school, “What did she mean when she said that to her friend?” Reporters debate what a politician meant in those public statements.
Words are recipes. Take the word, “love”, as it appears in 1 Corinthians 13. In the Greek of the New Testament period, the word is agape. Phileo is another word for love in that same Greek: Greek from the first century called Koine Greek. First of all, Paul selected between these two words when he penned the letter. He picked “agape” to convey the special meaning. In the second place the translator determined that the English word “love” best captured the idea in English. Words change meanings over time in living languages like English. This is why dictionaries keep needing updates and new Bible translations are produced. “Charity” carries nuances of meaning now a days that it did not a few hundred years ago. It now carries the idea of something given when one is in desperate need. “Love” is the better choice even though it is a word with more variations in meaning than agape.
The recipe in the word “agape” consists of a strong measure of responsibility and commitment. Sometimes the English word love carries this same freight. Other times it does not. Context helps us understand, but often paragraphs of explanations are necessary to clarify what is being revealed when a word is used in a translation. Often metaphors are brought into the conversation in order to accomplish this. “Love is being willing to die for someone.” “Love is remaining loyal.” Or as we find in 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is kind.” “Love does not keep a record of wrongs.”
In the conversation between Jesus and Peter recorded in John 21, two Greek words for love are used in the conversation and only one English word is normally used in translation to carry the meanings. To complicate matters Jesus was speaking a language other than Greek, a common dialect. John, the inspired author, would have remembered that original word and translated it into Greek with the words agape and phileo to convey the original meaning.
In the Gospel of Mark, sometimes the actual word Jesus spoke in his common dialect is used and then followed by its translation into Greek (Mark 5:41; 15:34). John does this for us a couple times (1:41-42); but not in John 21. We do not know what the word sounded like that Jesus used on this occasion; but John chooses two words in Greek to represent what he remembers being said. The choice is made with the benefit of hindsight. It is likely that the two men are speaking to each other and until the end of the conversation are attaching different meanings to the word(s) they are using for similar ideas. Ideas that are very close but different in an important way.
One word for love is the word with the warmth of a close familial friendship or brotherhood. The other word is weighing in more heavily on the aspect of commitment or loyalty to act on that friendship with sacrifices. Each word is a unique recipe. A measure of salt is different. A measure of sugar is in a different proportion. The meaning of the words vary accordingly.
Jesus is asking Peter if he is committed, Peter is hearing Jesus ask if they are friends. By the end of the conversation Peter realized that Jesus is calling on their friendship to demonstrate an ongoing commitment for him to follow Jesus as long as he lives. The wonderful thing about the Bible is that there is enough dialog — enough context — to figure this out with nothing more than a careful reading and a good translation.
Comparing translations is sometimes helpful. That we can detect the recipe of meaning after so many hundreds of years of cultural differences, and through translation from spoken language to the language it is written down in the first time, through other translations over the centuries since then, is evidence of the Bible’s inspiration. And so much has been unearthed to help us. Just this week Greek translations from the Hebrew language of portions of two Old Testament prophetic books (Zechariah and Nahum) from the third century were newly unearthed at Qumran. Qumran is were the Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in the 1940’s providing for us one of the oldest and complete scrolls of Isaiah that we have.
Stephen Williams