A DEADLY MISUNDERSTANDING:

A Congressman’s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide, By Mark D. Siljander

From Chapter Three, “ THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF THE BIBLE” P. 29-31

There is quite a bit of scholarly debate about whether the Aramaic version was derived from the original Greek or the other way around, but for our purposes, it really doesn't matter. Either way, John explained, the Aramaic version would most accurately let us into the mindset and perspective of a first-century Middle Easterner through its cultural norms, nuances, metaphors, and figures of speech. When Eastern thoughts are translated into Western languages, such as Greek, Latin, or English, there is enormous potential for mistranslation. It is not simply a mechanical process of replacing one term with another. It means lifting a body of meaning completely out of its original cultural context and placing it into a foreign way of thinking.

For example, suppose we read in an article today, "The senator was enjoying himself at the party but he left looking rather blue." Someone not familiar with English idioms might be alarmed: was there something wrong with the senator's blood oxygen? Was he gravely ill? An American, of course, would know that the word "blue" also has another meaning: "sad" or "depressed." But wait-suppose the article was translated directly into German. The German word for "blue," blau, has another meaning too, only in German the secondary meaning is not "depressed" but "drunk." To the German reader, the sentence would appear to make perfect sense, but he would come away with a very different impression of the senator! And this example compares two similar contemporary cultures. Translate from the language of one culture to a profoundly different culture, and the possibilities for confusion escalate alarmingly. When General Electric translated its slogan "We bring good things to life" into Mandarin for a promotional effort in China, it came out, "We bring your ancestors back from the grave."

I soon found another example, this one with more profound implications. In a long-debated passage in Luke, Jesus says: If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. (Luke 14:26, NKJv) How can Jesus instruct us to love our enemies in one breath, and in the next tell us to hate everyone dearest to us? Christian theologians have labored mightily over the centuries to explain away this blunt contradiction. Again Aramaic provided an answer. The word in Aramaic for "hate" is very similar to a word meaning "set aside." With that one substitution, the passage suddenly makes complete sense, fully consistent with the rest of Jesus's teachings: devoting oneself to God would certainly mean putting aside, or holding as a lesser priority, one's family, friends, possessions, and even one's own life. Not "hating" them-just keeping them in perspective.

If such simple examples could so profoundly shift with the meaning of a single word, what other possibilities might this "secret language" hold in store? I excitedly searched out a copy of the Peshitta, the earliest known Aramaic New Testament (dating back to the third or fourth century), along with its 1933 translation into English by Dr. George Lamsa, a scholar of Iraqi origin himself. Armed with several Aramaic dictionaries and the Lamsa Peshitta, I began to dig in.

From my year of searching through the Bible after that encounter with Doug, I knew that the word "convert" appears exactly ten times in the New Testament (King James version) & five times in the Old Testament. A close read of the Aramaic edition turned up several words that are normally translated into English as "convert," the most common being shalem. This was fascinating. It sounded very similar to the Hebrew shalom, which means "peace." Jerusalem is "the city of peace," and Jews today greet each other with a shalom alechum that means, "Peace be with you." Aramaic and Hebrew are both Semitic languages and are closely related. Was there a connection?

Indeed there was: the meaning of the two words is virtually identical. In the New Testament, Jesus often greets others with a simple “Peace be with you,” which in his Aramaic vernacular would have been shiama loch, based on the same word, shalem. (Listen carefully to Mel Gibson’s film and you’ll hear James Caviezel in the title role saying “Shiama loch” numerous times.) But now I was confused. If the word means “peace,” then why was it being used in some passages where the English says “convert”?

As my linguistic investigation deepened, I learned that the word shalem has another meaning: “submit” or “surrender.” In ancient times, cautious travelers in the East, wishing not to draw attention to themselves lest they fall prey to robbers, would open their hands in a surrendering posture when encountering strang­ers on the road, to show that they had no weapons and only peaceful intent. “I come in peace” equals “I submit to your good­will.” From this meaning, by the way, we derive our modern word “salute,” along with the modern Western practice of the open handshake and the Far Eastern corollary the bow of sub­mission. Over time, the word shalem accrued a whole range of meanings, including “greeting,” “peace," “salute,” “turn back," “complete,” “fulfill,” “surrender,” “submit.”

Reading on, I felt my excitement growing. This was starting to make sense! When Peter told the crowd, “Repent and be converted” (Acts 3:19), the word he used was shalem. His literal meaning was not, “Give up your religion and adopt ours instead,” but something more like, “Turn back from your sinful ways and surrender your­self in faith to God.” Continuing through the Ararmaic text, I soon found another word with a meaning similar to shalem that is also translated into the King James’s English as “convert”: punaya, meaning “turning” or “restoring.” The term is often used in reference to “turning” Gentiles away from polytheism, & in another form, p’na, it is used especially with Jews, urging them to restore their faith or turn back to the one true God. Thus, at the very end of the book of James, when the author speaks of “converting the sinner” and saving his soul (James 5:19—20), the Aramaic word is p’na, which translates more accurately as “be restored from error.” James is not talking about convincing non-Jews to become Jews or non-“Christians” to become “Christians.” He is talking about helping troubled Jews return to the simplicity of submission to their faith. Repent and be converted. Submit to God. Be at peace.

It was crystal clear from the text that neither Jesus nor any of his followers ever advocated that anyone “convert” from one religion to another. Every use of the various Aramaic terms meant the same thing: “submit,” “surrender,” “return,” “be ful­filled,” “be restored.” Our insidious concept of conversion was a linguistic error, a clear mistranslation. Pure and simple: a mistake.

A Deadly Misunderstanding.

I set the book down and drew a deep breath. Finally, here was a solid answer to Doug’s question. Where did that strategy of conversion come from? From a terrible distortion of Jesus’ words. Instead of being a process of personal revelation and re­demption, conversion had become a tool of oppression. Perhaps this erroneous interpretation came with Constantine’s declara­tion in A.D.325, which made “Christianity” the official religion of the Roman empire. Or maybe the true meaning had already been lost years before, a casualty of the perennial human ten­dency to divide and dominate—the pernicious impulse to create a Green Line between “us” and “them.” However it happened historically, and however innocent or willful the motives, the idea had been twisted: the original notion that Jesus and his followers promoted, of conversion as something personal and transformational, had in time become dogmatic and political. And the seeds of centuries’ worth of violence had been sown.