Panama News

Last Friday my partner Doug and I, along with two Emberas, Cornelio and Abundio, finished a final read-through of our translations of the Gospel according to Mark and the letters of Paul to the Thessalonians and to Timothy. The process took a total of nine days and was required by our translation consultant as well as by the consultant supervisor for the Americas.

Part of the process was Doug’s checking of my work on Mark. Normally this is done before our consultant, Marion Miller, does her exegetical check. There is a reason for this: what we expected to finish in 2 1/2 days took 7 1/2 days! In the process, however, we changed some key biblical terms. Our term for ‘Kingdom of God’ was “God collecting the ones who believe him.” This was approved by our consultant and had been suggested by a couple of Emberas. However, in the final read-through, Cornelio and Abundio said it must be referring to Jesus coming to take his people to heaven. So Doug and I decided to suggest something a lot simpler: “God’s town (or people)”. They agreed because God is the Head and can decide who can be in his village. We phrase it in ways that don’t make it sound like it’s a physical village. So if you are a Citizen of the Kingdom, in Embera you are “from God’s town.”

We also changed our term for ‘priest’ from “one who habitually talks to God on account of his people” to “sacerdote”, which is Spanish. Our longer term was just that: too long. It was also not understood and was ungrammatical when used as a noun phrase. “Sacerdote” was used in the earlier New Testament. We will have to discuss at a later date just how to translate this into natural Embera. Fortunately, in the Gospel of Mark, the word ‘priest’ is almost always used with ‘chief’, and when we add “heads of” to “sacerdotes”, the Emberas understand that these people were authorities who, for the most part, opposed Jesus.

Now the provisional books are being duplicated and bound. Thankfully, we found a few typos and formatting errors just before the copying began in earnest. The books contain not only Mark but also 1 & 2 Thessalonians and 1 & 2 Timothy. Please pray that God would guide the distribution of the books so that those who are truly interested in reading them and providing helpful suggestions would each get a copy. There are also key people we would like to convince as to the quality and authenticity of the translation but we have come to the conclusion that God has to be the one to do the convincing. Please pray for those particular people.