An obvious mistranslation?

[Frankk]

As I’ve had such a great response to my other queries I thought I’d chance my arm and carry on!

In Matthew 28:19 we have the words, “baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”.

However, the original Greek states “baptizontes autous *eiv to onoma *tou patrou kai tou uiou kai tou agiou pneumatou.” (Sorry I haven’t got a Greek font on my PC! )

In Greek ‘eiv to onoma’ means INTO the name of rather than IN the name of, which would be ‘ev tw onomati’.

This seems a very important difference. IN seems to suggest ‘with the authority of’. So, ‘I command you to leave, in the name of Queen Elizabeth II’ or ‘I command you to stay in the name of the President of the United States’ means that you are giving the order on the authority of a higher figure.

However, to be baptized INTO the name surely means that you are baptized into the immediate ‘family’ of the Trinity, which is a far more crucial and significant event.

But a further puzzle is how eiv to onoma came to be translated as ‘in the name of’ in the first place. And this error (I assume it is one ) has been carried through numerous translations of the Bible . This is hardly a difficult phrase to translate and could be done easily by someone [like me] with a fairly basic knowledge of Greek. It just can’t be translated in this way - can it?

Over to you, folks.

 

[TOME]

Frankk,
I don’t think this is too much of a problem and I believe you already pointed out a significant theological point concerning the sacramental nature of Baptism ( which in the end is far more important than the translation of a word) namely, in Baptism we are brought into the life of the Trinity.

Matthew 28:19 first of all shows the Church’s development of the liturgical rite and theological understanding of Baptism. The theological understanding is what I was refering to above.
As far as the liturgical rite, this may help answer your question. In other passages of the NT, some older than Matthew, baptism was expressed as baptism “In the name of Jesus”, there isn’t the trinitarian formula. Translating “IN” as opposed to “INTO” would provided a continuity with other baptismal formulas while still preserving the theology of the sacrament.

 

[runandsew]

Here is a short article from a protestant site which might help:
bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Bible.show/sVerseID/24215/eVerseID/24215

Matthew 28:19
The word translated “in” is the Greek word eis. It means “into,” “inside of.” We are baptized into water, into the church, by means of the Holy Spirit. His name becomes ours by begettal (or adoption, as Paul says in Romans 8). It is our spiritual Family name! Therefore, our responsibility is to grow and uphold that name—to bring honor upon it by our words, attitudes, and deeds.

Matthew 28:19
Baptism serves to induct us into God’s church and Family. We are literally baptized into the name of God. It becomes our Family name, and we have a great responsibility to uphold it (see Exodus 20:7; Proverbs 22:1). Afterwards, when a minister lays his hands on us, God gives us of His Spirit, and we truly become Christians, members of the body of Christ. And because we have God’s Spirit in us, we become God’s children and heirs with Christ of all things (Romans 8:14-17; Hebrews 2:5-13)!

 

[marlo]

we should leave the translation to the experts and let the church guide us.

As I’ve had such a great response to my other queries I thought I’d chance my arm and carry on!

In Matthew 28:19 we have the words, “baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”.

However, the original Greek states “baptizontes autous *eiv to onoma *tou patrou kai tou uiou kai tou agiou pneumatou.” (Sorry I haven’t got a Greek font on my PC! )

In Greek ‘eiv to onoma’ means INTO the name of rather than IN the name of, which would be ‘ev tw onomati’.

This seems a very important difference. IN seems to suggest ‘with the authority of’. So, ‘I command you to leave, in the name of Queen Elizabeth II’ or ‘I command you to stay in the name of the President of the United States’ means that you are giving the order on the authority of a higher figure.

However, to be baptized INTO the name surely means that you are baptized into the immediate ‘family’ of the Trinity, which is a far more crucial and significant event.

But a further puzzle is how eiv to onoma came to be translated as ‘in the name of’ in the first place. And this error (I assume it is one ) has been carried through numerous translations of the Bible . This is hardly a difficult phrase to translate and could be done easily by someone [like me] with a fairly basic knowledge of Greek. It just can’t be translated in this way - can it?

Over to you, folks.

 

[Ron_Conte]

the translation philosophy that you are relying upon, in order to reach the conclusion that this translation is an error, is overly literal. The error is in your approach to the text, not in the text or the translation.

Ron

 

[Frankk]

Thank you to all for your feedback.

runandsew, the link was very useful and I tend to agree with John and Richard Ritenbaugh that ‘into’ represents a more accurate translation. Indeed it seems to add something to the overall meaning rather than detract from it.

Ron, I’m not sure I agree with you that the translation is overly literal. I can see that when translating from (any) foreign languages a degree of flexibility is needed where literal translations are not possible and there is a need to put more emphasis on expressing the overall meaning in satisfying the English equivalent; but this particular example seems straighforward enough.

Obviously, it isn’t as straightforward as I’d like to think it is because far more erudite Classical scholars than I, have translated it as ‘in’!!

But thanks once again to all - I’m still not fully clear on it but have taken some huge steps forward in my understanding of the passage.

 

[Frankk]

Marlo

I agree with your point about relying on the Church! Life seemed much easier before we were encouraged to read the Bible more frequently. Well, for me at least!!

 

[Verbum]

Hi Frankk,

If you can lay your hands on a grammar of koine Greek, I think you will find that eis+ accusative often replaces en + dative.

Meantime, you can read this :

ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/greek-3/msg00147.html

From which this quote :

The prepositions likewise had begun to overlap. Classical Greek had made a clear distinction between eis and en. In the Koine eis had begun to encroach on the territory of en. (Cp. WestcottUs comments on John 1:18; the papyri has shown than making fine distinctions between these two words is not legitimate.)

Verbum

 

[Verbum]

Hi Frankk,

If you can lay your hands on a grammar of koine Greek, I think you will find that eis+ accusative often replaces en + dative.

Meantime, you can read this :

ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/greek-3/msg00147.html

From which this quote :

The prepositions likewise had begun to overlap. Classical Greek had made a clear distinction between eis and en. In the Koine eis had begun to encroach on the territory of en. (Cp. WestcottUs comments on John 1:18; the papyri has shown than making fine distinctions between these two words is not legitimate.)

Verbum

 

[Verbum]

Sorry for the double posting. I got “database error” and posted again.

Verbum

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

As I’ve had such a great response to my other queries I thought I’d chance my arm and carry on!

In Matthew 28:19 we have the words, “baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”.

However, the original Greek states “baptizontes autous *eiv to onoma *tou patrou kai tou uiou kai tou agiou pneumatou.” (Sorry I haven’t got a Greek font on my PC! )

In Greek ‘eiv to onoma’ means INTO the name of rather than IN the name of, which would be ‘ev tw onomati’.

This seems a very important difference. IN seems to suggest ‘with the authority of’. So, ‘I command you to leave, in the name of Queen Elizabeth II’ or ‘I command you to stay in the name of the President of the United States’ means that you are giving the order on the authority of a higher figure.

However, to be baptized INTO the name surely means that you are baptized into the immediate ‘family’ of the Trinity, which is a far more crucial and significant event.

But a further puzzle is how eiv to onoma came to be translated as ‘in the name of’ in the first place. And this error (I assume it is one ) has been carried through numerous translations of the Bible . This is hardly a difficult phrase to translate and could be done easily by someone [like me] with a fairly basic knowledge of Greek. It just can’t be translated in this way - can it?

Over to you, folks.

Dear Friend,
It is, I believe an error to rely too heavily on the Greek.
Though the Greek may have preceded the Latin, Extant Latin is more ancient than extant Greek.
The Latin of this verse, which is dateable to the 2nd century is:
(euntes ergo)
docete omnes gentes baptizantes eos in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti
‘in nomine’ links to the ablative, so the word ‘in’ should be read as ‘within’ rather than ‘into’.
(The words in brackets are not witnessed in the ancient Latin.)

 

[Frankk]

It is, I believe an error to rely too heavily on the Greek.
Though the Greek may have preceded the Latin, Extant Latin is more ancient than extant Greek.

Dave

This is an interesting concept but I wonder how many Biblical scholars would agree with it? ‘The Greek’ is what the Gospel was written in by the four Saints, so how can a translation [into whatever language] possibly be as accurate as the original?

I’m not sure how the comparative ages of the Latin and Greek are relevant.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Dave

This is an interesting concept but I wonder how many Biblical scholars would agree with it? ‘The Greek’ is what the Gospel was written in by the four Saints, so how can a translation [into whatever language] possibly be as accurate as the original?

I’m not sure how the comparative ages of the Latin and Greek are relevant.

About AD 200, as a result of efforts by Pope Victor I, the first African Pope, The Liturgy, and most of the New Testament was translated into Latin from the original tongues.
These translations were of excellent quality, performed by learned men, well at home with all the dialects involved, which were at the time, still living.
What seems to have happenned then is that this new corpus of scripture was translated into various lnguages, including some of the source languages, so that the corpus was unified, regardless of language, and the original texts fell into disuse, and were lost.
Thus the Greek you now see is not derived from the original native Greek, but rather, is a back-translation from the African Latin. This, St Jerome was unaware of, as the firestorm of AD 250 destroyed the history of the former golden age, and much of its literature and scripture.
So yes, much of the sacred cow of Greek primacy is an illusion, and many will swear black is white to preserve their illusion.
There are many cases of similar things happenning in history, for instance, there was only an Armenian translation of the Syriac commentary written by Ephrem Syrus, concerniing Tatian’s Diatessaron, but later a Syriac version turned up, and was hailed as the original, but close examination reveals this to be a back-translation which deliberately places normative text in place of the strange readings found in the Aramaic. In short, the Syriac is a pious forgery. Pious forgeries are unfortunately common, and some are quite convincing.
Likewise, the Arabic Diatessaron, witnessed and translated by Ciasca, seems far too normative, and lacking in continuity, compared with the Latin Diatessaron, which is purported to be its junior.
The Classical position is that the Arabic is translated from Syriac, which is an Arabic dialect, so the translation is from one dialect to a close relative. This being the case, the translation, unles the work of an idiot should be an excellent representation of the source, yet it is utterly lacking in continuity and integrity. The Latin Diatessaro, on th other hand, is accused of being a mechanical translation of a Syriac original into Latin, by substituting equivalent phrases of Jerome’s Latin for the equivalent phrase in the Syriac Pesheeta. Such a procedure should produce a text littered with repetitions and a lack of deviation from Jeromian phraseology, yet the Latin Diatessaron displays none of these features. The Latin Diatessaron has all the features of being an original work, native to the tongue in which it appears, so again, accepted wisdom seems to be standing on its head.

 

[CRW]

As I’ve had such a great response to my other queries I thought I’d chance my arm and carry on!

In Matthew 28:19 we have the words, “baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”.

However, the original Greek states “baptizontes autous *eiv to onoma *tou patrou kai tou uiou kai tou agiou pneumatou.” (Sorry I haven’t got a Greek font on my PC! )

In Greek ‘eiv to onoma’ means INTO the name of rather than IN the name of, which would be ‘ev tw onomati’.

This seems a very important difference. IN seems to suggest ‘with the authority of’. So, ‘I command you to leave, in the name of Queen Elizabeth II’ or ‘I command you to stay in the name of the President of the United States’ means that you are giving the order on the authority of a higher figure.

However, to be baptized INTO the name surely means that you are baptized into the immediate ‘family’ of the Trinity, which is a far more crucial and significant event.

But a further puzzle is how eiv to onoma came to be translated as ‘in the name of’ in the first place. And this error (I assume it is one ) has been carried through numerous translations of the Bible . This is hardly a difficult phrase to translate and could be done easily by someone [like me] with a fairly basic knowledge of Greek. It just can’t be translated in this way - can it?

Over to you, folks.

The Jerome Biblical Commentary: “But since the author of the final GK text seems to have copied with modifications the whole Gospel according to Mark, it is now commonly thought that it is possible that in its present form (Matthew) it is the work of an eyewitness apostle. Papias of Hierapolis suggests: “Matthew complied the Sayings in the Aramaic language, and everyone translated them as well as they could.”