“You are the salt of the earth” - Jesus f. Eminem, Rihanna
Imagine translating Eminem and Rihanna’s song, “Love the way you lie” into a rural Chinese dialect and asking a schoolteacher to read the (translated) lyrics to a group of high school students. Even if the translation were painstakingly undertaken by an experienced interpreter, it would be difficult (probably impossible) for the high school students to get a good feel for the original song. For one thing, the title of the song itself includes a wordplay, a pun— “lie” as it is used here could mean either “to (tell a) lie,” as in, to speak an untruth, or similarly could indicate, “to lie (down)” as in to “lie on the bed.” If you are the Chinese translator, and there two very different verbs you could use, which would you pick? Would you translate the song, “I love the way you tell lies” or “I love the way you lie down?”
Even words like, “love” and “way” would be difficult to translate. As is well known, most other languages like Spanish or Greek have multiple words that English translates as, “love.” In Spanish, it would be amar, querer, or even, encantarse. And Spanish, at least, is a language with Latin roots and a Western alphabet—imagine the challenge of finding the right Chinese character for these complicated and abstract concepts! The word “translate” comes to us from the Latin translatio, which means literally, “to carry across.” Like trying to carry a package of supplies from one side of a river to another, trying to carry a particular concept across the language river almost always results in some loss of the original content. (Think of the way you’d lose part of your supplies every time you forded a river in Oregon Trail.)
Beyond the meaning of the words themselves, there are the other elements of the original song—the rhyming of syllables, the emotion of Eminem’s voice, and the cadence of the beat. Those same words would sound very different if read by William Shatner while a soft piano accompaniment provided the acoustic backdrop, and that’s just if it were read in English. Wordplay is a central component of lyrical art, be it poetry, prose, or music. It is inextricably interwoven in the fabric of the text itself and cannot be separated from the piece without sacrificing some of the integrity of the original content. Several reviews of the music video for “Love the way you lie,” intentionally refer to it as, the “hit video” for “Love the way you lie” because, like the song lyrics, the video visually addresses the topic of domestic violence. (How would one translate that phrase— “hit song” —into another language? Imagine if Derek Jeter put out a pop duo with Lady Gaga. Just think… in the same week, he could have both a “hit single,” and go down in the boxscore as having gone 1 for 3 at the plate with a “hit… single.”)
The challenge of translating “Love the way you lie” for rural Chinese high school students can lend us some insight into the difficulties posed by Biblical translation, which come into play with today’s Gospel passage. We are taking words first spoken as part of a sermon in Aramaic (a regional dialect of ancient Hebrew), but recorded in written form by Matthew in Greek (which uses a different alphabet and has different tenses, moods, etc. from Hebrew) and then translated by modern scholars into contemporary American English. We not only lack a grasp of the original syntactic structure of Aramaic—we do not have possess a complete cultural understanding of the particular paradigm in which the language evolved and through which the first hearers of Jesus’ words would have interpreted their meaning. The only way we can hope to gain a better sense of what Jesus was really getting at is to study the world in which the words were uttered and try to trans-late that meaning to our own time.
There exist many theories of translation, but the two major modes are metaphrasis, also known in linguistic theory as “formal equivalence,” and paraphrasis, or “dynamic equivalence.” Metaphrasis indicates an attempt to translate a passage literally, word for word, whereas paraphrasis (which should look familiar to us English speakers as “paraphrase”) focuses on getting the original point across as effectively as possible in the language of the hearer, even if that means sacrificing some of the literal-ness of the translation. In the Gospel passage above, the translators have gone the latter root, attempting to render the saying of Jesus in terms that will make the most sense to the modern American. In doing so, however, they may have altered the meaning of Jesus’ words.
The original sentence is better translated as, “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?” By choosing to translate saltiness, that is, “that which makes it salt,” into “flavor,” or “taste,” the editor is focusing on salt as an item that we use to add flavor to food. Which, of course, is how most Americans think of salt. But it’s not how most ancient Mediterraneans viewed salt. They would have heard something different.
Like the word, “lie” in English, the original Aramaic word translated as “earth” here has multiple possible meanings. One is ground or earth. But the other is “earthen oven.” Ancient Palestinian ovens were not built out of brick or metal; they were small, hollowed out hillsides dug out of the earth. Furthermore, these ovens were not fueled by wood—wood is scarce in the Holy Land, and because it is so valuable, it is only used for things like constructing fishing boats. They could not afford to burn it—it was far too precious. So, like the Native Americans who burnt buffalo chips on the Great Plains, these Mediterraneans would have used animal dung to fuel their ovens. But in order to burn the dung, it was necessary to put bricks of salt in the base of the oven to serve as a catalyst.
Thus, a better translation of Jesus’ words might read, “You are the (catalyst) of the (oven). But if you lose (your ability to stoke the fire), what good are you?” This interpretation would seem to fit much better with Jesus’ other sayings, for instance, “I have come to set the earth (oven) on fire—how I wish it were already blazing!” (Luke 12:49) Plus, it makes far more sense that Jesus would move from talking about salt as a catalyst for the fire, to then telling the disciples that they are the fire of a lamp, and that they are to be “the light of the world.” (see today’s Gospel).
So, one interpretation of today’s Gospel is that Jesus is telling his disciples—”You are the catalyst for the oven! I am the initial spark that lights the fire, but you all are what is going to keep it burning. Long after the initial lighting of the fire (i.e. Jesus’ life on earth), there will have to be blocks of salt (you, disciples) to keep that fire burning.” His words did not just apply to the first disciples—they’re aimed at all of us as followers of Christ. Twenty centuries later, it is up to us to be the salt (the catalyst) that keeps the fire burning.
Reflection Questions
Even words like, “love” and “way” would be difficult to translate. As is well known, most other languages like Spanish or Greek have multiple words that English translates as, “love.” In Spanish, it would be amar, querer, or even, encantarse. And Spanish, at least, is a language with Latin roots and a Western alphabet—imagine the challenge of finding the right Chinese character for these complicated and abstract concepts! The word “translate” comes to us from the Latin translatio, which means literally, “to carry across.” Like trying to carry a package of supplies from one side of a river to another, trying to carry a particular concept across the language river almost always results in some loss of the original content. (Think of the way you’d lose part of your supplies every time you forded a river in Oregon Trail.)
Beyond the meaning of the words themselves, there are the other elements of the original song—the rhyming of syllables, the emotion of Eminem’s voice, and the cadence of the beat. Those same words would sound very different if read by William Shatner while a soft piano accompaniment provided the acoustic backdrop, and that’s just if it were read in English. Wordplay is a central component of lyrical art, be it poetry, prose, or music. It is inextricably interwoven in the fabric of the text itself and cannot be separated from the piece without sacrificing some of the integrity of the original content. Several reviews of the music video for “Love the way you lie,” intentionally refer to it as, the “hit video” for “Love the way you lie” because, like the song lyrics, the video visually addresses the topic of domestic violence. (How would one translate that phrase— “hit song” —into another language? Imagine if Derek Jeter put out a pop duo with Lady Gaga. Just think… in the same week, he could have both a “hit single,” and go down in the boxscore as having gone 1 for 3 at the plate with a “hit… single.”)
The challenge of translating “Love the way you lie” for rural Chinese high school students can lend us some insight into the difficulties posed by Biblical translation, which come into play with today’s Gospel passage. We are taking words first spoken as part of a sermon in Aramaic (a regional dialect of ancient Hebrew), but recorded in written form by Matthew in Greek (which uses a different alphabet and has different tenses, moods, etc. from Hebrew) and then translated by modern scholars into contemporary American English. We not only lack a grasp of the original syntactic structure of Aramaic—we do not have possess a complete cultural understanding of the particular paradigm in which the language evolved and through which the first hearers of Jesus’ words would have interpreted their meaning. The only way we can hope to gain a better sense of what Jesus was really getting at is to study the world in which the words were uttered and try to trans-late that meaning to our own time.
There exist many theories of translation, but the two major modes are metaphrasis, also known in linguistic theory as “formal equivalence,” and paraphrasis, or “dynamic equivalence.” Metaphrasis indicates an attempt to translate a passage literally, word for word, whereas paraphrasis (which should look familiar to us English speakers as “paraphrase”) focuses on getting the original point across as effectively as possible in the language of the hearer, even if that means sacrificing some of the literal-ness of the translation. In the Gospel passage above, the translators have gone the latter root, attempting to render the saying of Jesus in terms that will make the most sense to the modern American. In doing so, however, they may have altered the meaning of Jesus’ words.
The original sentence is better translated as, “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?” By choosing to translate saltiness, that is, “that which makes it salt,” into “flavor,” or “taste,” the editor is focusing on salt as an item that we use to add flavor to food. Which, of course, is how most Americans think of salt. But it’s not how most ancient Mediterraneans viewed salt. They would have heard something different.
Like the word, “lie” in English, the original Aramaic word translated as “earth” here has multiple possible meanings. One is ground or earth. But the other is “earthen oven.” Ancient Palestinian ovens were not built out of brick or metal; they were small, hollowed out hillsides dug out of the earth. Furthermore, these ovens were not fueled by wood—wood is scarce in the Holy Land, and because it is so valuable, it is only used for things like constructing fishing boats. They could not afford to burn it—it was far too precious. So, like the Native Americans who burnt buffalo chips on the Great Plains, these Mediterraneans would have used animal dung to fuel their ovens. But in order to burn the dung, it was necessary to put bricks of salt in the base of the oven to serve as a catalyst.
Thus, a better translation of Jesus’ words might read, “You are the (catalyst) of the (oven). But if you lose (your ability to stoke the fire), what good are you?” This interpretation would seem to fit much better with Jesus’ other sayings, for instance, “I have come to set the earth (oven) on fire—how I wish it were already blazing!” (Luke 12:49) Plus, it makes far more sense that Jesus would move from talking about salt as a catalyst for the fire, to then telling the disciples that they are the fire of a lamp, and that they are to be “the light of the world.” (see today’s Gospel).
So, one interpretation of today’s Gospel is that Jesus is telling his disciples—”You are the catalyst for the oven! I am the initial spark that lights the fire, but you all are what is going to keep it burning. Long after the initial lighting of the fire (i.e. Jesus’ life on earth), there will have to be blocks of salt (you, disciples) to keep that fire burning.” His words did not just apply to the first disciples—they’re aimed at all of us as followers of Christ. Twenty centuries later, it is up to us to be the salt (the catalyst) that keeps the fire burning.
Reflection Questions
1. How might you be called to be a catalyst in the world around you? In science, catalysts are agents of change—they are substances that cause reactions in their surrounding environment without being destroyed in the process. How might you—a young adult of faith—be called to be an agent of change in the world around you, whether on campus at the University of Michigan, or in the larger American society?
2. Jesus warns that, once the salt has “lost its saltiness,” it is no longer good for anything. How might you serve as a catalyst for the fire without yourself getting “burnt out?” Once you’re burnt out, you will no longer be able to effect that change around you, so how might you care for yourself, to “preserve what makes you effective?”
** For further reading on cultural tools to translate the Scriptures, I highly recommend John Pilch's book, The Cultural Dictionary of the Bible. I am heavily indebted to Professor Pilch (and his colleagues Jerome Neyrey and Bruce Malina) for these weekly reflections. Check out his take on Salt of the Earth here!
