gcdonner wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2024 1:14 pm
Neto wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2024 7:56 am
gcdonner wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 9:09 pm
Romans 6 supports your averted meaning (highlighted above). Immersion is "death".
I have already said that 'immersion' as a mechanical process is symbolically 'death, burial, and resurrection', but it does not mean death in the literal (physical) sense, an dI do not think that it means only death in the figurative sense, either. What I can recall of what you've said in the past goes along the lines of identification with the Jewish purification rites, which I also will not contest.
Linguistic factors must also be considered. The Banawa use very little figurative language. I only know of one symbolic usage - calling a person who steals a 'sawa'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tayra Everything else is understood in only the literal sense. The only place in Scripture where I used a similar type of symbolism was where Jesus called Herod a 'fox', and I added an explanation of the figurative connection. (They also do not have foxes there - I was forced to use a transliteration of the Portuguese name. In that case, because it is a single instance, it was permissible under the rules of Bible translation to insert an explanation. But that cannot be done in all occurrences of all forms of the word 'baptize'.)
There are other implications with such a translation approach that are too difficult to fully explain in a setting like this.
Isn't your job as a translator to give the "true sense"? Implying anything other than immersion is not the true sense of the word. Conveying traditions only is not helpful when translating.
The etymological meaning is not always the "true sense". Also, which is the true sense, the literal translation or the meaning? We may well not agree on this point, but I believe that the applied meaning is more important than the mechanical meaning.
But another important factor in Bible translation for a pre-literate society is that they do not yet have the tools to do in-depth study. (I am not suggesting that they were not "smart enough" - their knowledge of their 'world' far exceeded anything one might encounter in any book.) No other books existed at all in that language, except for the few we were able to transcribe (from their own stories) and print, and the Scripture. It is a matter of meeting them where they are, then realizing that the Scripture version we are producing needs to be more like a children's Bible. They had no written language style. Everything was oral. Even in English, oral presentation style is not like written style. In writing you can utilize much more complex grammatical structures, because the reader can re-read a paragraph or a section to get the meaning. Those written styles will eventually develop, but they were not yet there for us to use. There will come a time when a new translation will be needed, when they will be able to do the work themselves. That era is perhaps beginning, but it will still take some time to come to full bloom.
[I have mentioned some of this here before, but the Banawa were, around just 25 years before we arrived there, an isolated nomadic jungle tribe, with absolutely no contact at all with the outside world (not even with "back-water Brazilians" of mixed heritage). They had some limited contact previous to that, in the years of the rubber boom, but not for somewhere around at least 20 years, and never with any kind of "advanced society" where there were provisions for formal education. Some young men, who were toddlers or not yet born when we arrived there, have been out to an indigenous Bible school, so there IS a beginning, something to continue building on.]
Congregation: Gospel Haven Mennonite Fellowship, Benton, Ohio (Holmes Co.) a split from Beachy-Amish Mennonite.
Personal heritage & general theological viewpoint: conservative Mennonite Brethren.