Revisiting Our Holy Words

Abiding in Hope

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Last year during the season of Advent I found myself arguing with our common Bible translations where the word “repent” is concerned. Do you argue with the Bible? I consider it a regular and important spiritual discipline. 

I was getting ready to talk about how Mark’s gospel introduces Jesus. Jesus’ first words, according to Mark, are:

     The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; 

     repent, and believe in the good news. (Mark 1.15, NRSV) 

It seemed odd to me that Jesus was saying “repent” when he hadn’t identified a single thing we shouldn’t do. When I looked behind our English “repent,” I found the Greek metanoia. That’s where my Bible argument started. 

Metanoia is a big word. It denotes a change of mind, a reorientation, a new perspective. “Repent” is one aspect of metanoia, one way it might look to see more clearly and change one’s mind about past and present. But compared to the expansive Venn diagram that represents metanoia, the circle for “repent”—with its load of shame, sorrow, and guilt—would be very small indeed.

Which makes it surprising, and disappointing, that our most regularly cited Bible translations use “repent” consistently for metanoia. We’ve been shaped (mis-shaped) by language that unvaryingly invites us to regret rather than to reorient. What if our Bibles showed us a bold Jesus who bursts on the scene, in Mark and elsewhere, with an invitation to utterly change our hearts and minds, to see the world and one another anew, to be transformed in our very being?![1]

Our Bible words matter. When we say what faith is about, are our words too small?

This past summer, I got to lead a United Women in Faith study[2] that invited us to consider the Aramaic words that almost certainly lie behind the Greek through which the New Testament comes to us. Aramaic would have been the day-to-day language of Jesus and his first hearers. 

I don’t remember ever really thinking about Aramaic. I studied Greek in seminary! But this question of the Aramaic behind it; this felt new. Why haven’t we wondered as urgently about the words Jesus actually spoke, as about the Greek versions of them that consume so much attention in our commentaries? 

This Aramaic question is complicated by (as I understand it—and I haven’t gone as deep as I hope to) the absence of written records of Aramaic as spoken in the 1st century CE. Still, scholars of Aramaic speak of a language that is more mystical, multivalent and earthy than the Greek. To take seriously these differences and incorporate them into our understanding of Jesus’ message would be nothing short of “revolutionary.”[3] Here’s why:

How much expanded heart consciousness and prophetic juice might result from hearing, for example, that what we have translated as “be ye perfect” really means “be you all-embracing,” or that “to be satisfied” means “to be surrounded by fruit”; that “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” also means “soften what’s rigid inside and you shall receive physical vigor and strength from the universe”; that “blessed are the pure in heart” means blessed are those “whose passion is electrified by deep abiding purpose….”[4]

Our focus in this study was the Lord’s Prayer, and we spent time with a version of that familiar prayer, rendered from the Aramaic by Neil Douglas-Klotz in his book Prayers of the Cosmos:

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,

Focus your light within us—make it useful:

Create your reign of unity now—

Your one desire then acts with ours,

as in all light, so in all forms.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,

as we release the strands we hold

of others’ guilt.

Don’t let surface things delude us,

but free us from what holds us back.

From you is born all ruling will,

the power and the life to do,

the song that beautifies all,

from age to age it renews.

Truly, power to these statements—

may they be the ground from which all

my actions grow: Amen.[5]

I’ve found this version rich and inspiring. How about you? “Loose the cords of mistakes binding us—as we release the strands we hold / of others’ guilt.” I have felt those fetters, binding me, and I know when others have felt me holding the ones around them. This version of the prayers makes me see anew; it opens my mind to ideas and images I don’t grasp when I pray the long-familiar words we say in worship.

I’m working on memorizing it. How long has it been since you’ve re-remembered these Lord’s Prayer words?

Our prayer words matter. I want to keep them real in my heart and life? 

These “holy words” questions have made me curious about others which include:

  • king, and kingdom, and can we say “kin-dom” instead?[6]
  • sin, and forgiveness
  • salvation, from another big Greek word—sozo—that we have often boiled down to “going to heaven when we die”[7]
  • the valorization of sacrifice, and the misguided theology of redemptive violence[8]

In all these examples, I worry that we’ve diminished Jesus’ true vision and message. Some of these patterns seem to have been meant to serve the institution—the church through the ages—that hasn’t always been able to live the best of what Jesus wanted us to know and be. Sacrifice and violence fueled the Crusades, and the slave trade. “Repent” made people dependent on a religious system that alone could grant absolution.

It matters, through the ages, and in this age. Pick any one of these questions and see where it takes you, in your thinking, your prayer, and your leading.

Finally, let me commend what might be a helpful sounding board for you as you consider, and reconsider, some of these holy words. It’s the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament.[9] If you haven’t already picked this up, do take a look. It’s a dynamic equivalence translation by twelve Native American individuals that seeks to remain true to the original language of the Bible but is informed by oral culture and storytelling traditions. 

The energy behind this translation reminds me of what I see in the discussion of Aramaic antecedents of our Greek words. Both are more indigenous than the languages we’ve inherited.

I keep finding, when I get curious about holy words like the ones I’ve mentioned here, even when none of our standard translations reflect a deepening of thought and curiosity on these subjects, the First Nations Version does. I think they’re on to something.

I’ll leave you with their rendering of Jesus’ first words in the gospel of Mark:

“The time has now come!” he said to the people. “Creator’s good road is right in front of you. It is time to return to the right ways of thinking and doing! Put your trust in this good story I am bringing to you.” (Mark 1.15, First Nations Version)

[1] For an overview of the repent/metanoia problem, take a look at this Wikipedia article. Here’s another good, accessible discussionon this subject.

[2] Riva Tabelisma, Living the Kin-Dom: Exploring the Lord’s Prayer as a Spiritual Practice of Transformation (UMW/UWF 2023).

[3] Matthew Fox, Foreword, ix, in Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’s Words (HarperOne, 1990).

[4] Ibid., ix-x.

[5] Tabelisma, 7, quoting Douglas-Klotz, 41. Each of these phrases is accompanied in Douglas-Klotz’s book with alternate renderings that illustrate the richness and multiplicity of meaning carried within the Aramaic.

[6] This was the subject of my message on a recent Sunday, if you want to listen in (starting at about 26:32).

[7] Here’s a link with a very brief teaser about the breadth of this actual term.

[8] See Rita Nakashima Brock & Rebecca Ann Parker, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (Beacon, 2009).

[9] InterVarsity Press, 2021.

The Rev. Lee Roorda Schott serves as pastor of Valley UMC in West Des Moines, Iowa. This post is republished from "Abiding in Hope," a spiritual formation project of the Iowa Annual Conference. This content may be reproduced with full credit to the author and linked to the original post.