The past careers of languages are as diverse as the worlds that each language has created for its speakers. They have suffered very different fates: some (like Sanskrit or Aramaic) growing to have speaker populations distributed across vast tracts, but ultimately shrinking to insignificance; others (such as the languages of the Caucasus or Papua) twinkling steadily in inaccessible refuges; others still yielding up their speakers to quite different traditions (as in so many parts of North and South America, Africa and Australia). Some (such as Egyptian and Chinese) maintained their speakers and their traditions for thousands of years in a single territory, defying all invaders; others (such as Greek and Latin) spread by military invasion, but ultimately lost ground to new invaders.
Often enough, one tradition has piggybacked on another, ultimately supplanting it. One big language parasitises another, and in a ‘coup de main’ takes over the channels built up over generations. This is a common trick as empires succeed one another, in every time and continent: Persia’s Aramaic made good use of the networks established for Lydian in seventh-century Asia Minor; in the sixteenth century, Spanish usurped the languages of the Aztecs and Incas, using them to rule in Mexico and Peru; and in the early days of British India, English and Urdu gained access to power structures built in Persian. But the timescale on which these changing fortunes have been played out is astonishingly varied: a single decade may set the pattern for a thousand years to follow, as when Alexander took over the eastern Mediterranean from the Persians: or a particular trend may assert itself little by little, mile by mile, village by village, over thousands of years: just so did Chinese percolate in East Asia.
– Ostler, Empires of the Word, pp. 11-12
A few thoughts:
The Central Asian language we have learned is a mountain language, one of those “twinkling steadily in inaccessible refuges.” This is how it survived as successive larger and more powerful languages of empires washed over one another down on the plains. Never underestimate the power of mountains to preserve languages and cultures.
‘Coup de main’ means a surprise attack or a quick, forceful military action, “blow with the hand” in French. Had to look this up just now since Ostler didn’t provide a translation or footnote. It’s curious how many authors still assume their English readers don’t need the translations of French terms like this one. This is probably from our own language history where French was viewed as the language of the educated elite during the period of Middle English, a tradition that still leaves traces like this here and there.
It is remarkable and unpredictable how quickly a language’s fortunes can change in a given area. In our region, the past several decades have seen the “backward” language of the mountains and nomads become more dominant in our area than the three massive surrounding languages. This is largely because of accidents of American foreign policy in our people group’s favor. This surprising takeover has happened even while little pockets of the languages of ancient empires still barely manage to hold on among minorities. And all the while the internet and globalization mean that English is making massive inroads into each of these language communities. Thirty five years ago this picture would have seemed impossible.
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Tonight I was enjoying some fish and chips at a downtown Indianapolis plaza while recovering from a long day of support-raising training. Suddenly, I found myself recruited by strangers to join a team for the Taylor Swift trivia competition about to begin in the plaza. I warned my three enthusiastic new friends that I was one of the worst people they could possibly find for knowing pop music trivia. When it comes to superstars like Taylor Swift, I have very much been living under a rock. Or, as my Central Asian friends say, sleeping in the ear of a bull. And I am okay with that. There are Central Asian idioms to learn, after all.
Alas, the Swifties recruited me anyway. Funnily enough, I did help them get the answer right to the first song Swift ever learned on her guitar. But this was only because anyone who was a teenager beginning to learn the guitar in the 2000s was bound to quickly learn Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer. It was easy, catchy, and made you sound much better than you were. This deduction shocked us all by actually being correct and left my much younger teammates (who had been stumped by the question) thoroughly impressed. I also helped them spell the name of Zayn Malik, not because I know anything about him as an artist, but simply because I’ve had Muslim friends named Zayn or Malik. You really never know when two utterly isolated fields of knowledge are going to suddenly intersect.
Anyway, back to Central Asia. “Have you been sleeping in the ear of a bull?” is the kind of idiom someone would throw out when a person is ignorant of something that has become common knowledge to seemingly everyone else. In English, we would say things like “Where have you been?” or “How could you not know that?” or “Have you been living under a rock?” Imagine someone in the US not knowing that America is facing the slow-motion train wreck of Trump vs. Biden 2.0, for example.
My unbelieving Central Asian friends might use this saying when they’re insisting that it’s really the US who controls groups like ISIS as part of its grand puppet master strategy for the Middle East. And my believing local friends might use it when foreign Christians reveal that we don’t really understand what Jesus is talking about with the whole wineskins thing. Their common experience with using goat skins for liquids that ferment makes Jesus’ parable about the kingdom needing new goatskins super straightforward, something everyone surely knows – unless they’ve been asleep under a rock, that is, or in the ear of a bull.
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Every language is learnt by the young from the old, so that every living language is the embodiment of a tradition. That tradition is in principle immortal. Languages change, as they pass from the lips of one generation to the next, but there is nothing about this process of transmission which makes for decay or extinction. Like life itself, each new generation can receive the gift of its language afresh. And so it is that languages, unlike any of the people who speak them, need never grow infirm, or die.
Every language has a chance at immortality, but this is not to say that it will survive for ever. Genes too, and the species they encode, are immortal; but extinctions are a commonplace of palaeontology. Likewise, the actual lifespans of language communities vary enormously. The annals of language history are full of languages that have died out, traditions that have come to an end, leaving no speakers at all.
Ostler, Empires of the Word, pp. 7-8
Even more than the linguist, the Christian knows that every language has a chance at immortality. The presence of the world’s diverse languages in the Son of Man vision of Daniel 7 and the heavenly throne room vision of Revelation 7 imply that many languages will indeed be immortal, living forever on the lips of their redeemed speakers. This makes practical sense since no one human language is sufficient on its own to describe God in all his wonder. In fact, we may need to invent some new ones to account for the new experiences of finally seeing God face to face, having friends who are angels, possessing spiritual bodies, etc.
What do we make of the languages that have gone extinct in world history? If we take the promises of “all languages” literally, then we would need to insist that there were believers somehow present in all of those language groups in time past. More likely, the “all” of these passages is symbolic, meaning that the vast majority of the world’s languages will indeed be represented in heaven. A third intriguing possibility would be that of language resurrection, where there is a return in the new heavens and the new earth of languages long dead, just as my kids and I hope for a return of dinosaurs, wooly mammoths, and giant sloths.
After all, if we’ve got billions and billions of years to enjoy, I would certainly sign up for a class on old Sumerian were the library of New Jerusalem to offer such a course.
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What are the common barriers that keep the gospel from spreading from one group of humans to another? How can one group have a strong presence of believers and churches and yet live side by side with other groups that are completely unreached? The answer to this question is not as simple as it might seem.
The modern missionary movement mainly used geographic and political lenses when they sought to evangelize the world. William Carey’s An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen featured a list of the world’s countries, their population sizes, religions, and other statistics. Mission agencies followed suit until the late 1900s, focusing mainly on countries and political boundaries when they sought to organize their missions strategy. This is not without biblical precedent. In the book of Acts, we see that Paul’s missionary strategy is focused on the cities and provinces of the Roman Empire. Paul and Luke are using a geographic lens when they seek to apply the Great Commission (along with a very broad ethnic lens of Jew vs. Gentile). Paul’s ambition is to preach to the Gentiles in places where no one else has yet laid a foundation (Rom 15:14-24).
Political and geographic borders and systems can absolutely provide barriers to the gospel. Consider the great contrast of the two Koreas. South Korea, one of the most Christian nations on earth, neighbors North Korea, one of the most unreached. With the same language, ethnicity, and historically the same culture, what is the barrier? The DMZ and the North’s communist/cult of personality government that seeks to stamp out Christianity.
However, the nation-state lens of modern missions was insufficient to recognize other massive barriers to the gospel. 20th-century missiologists like Donald McGavran and Ralph Winter demonstrated that this political and geographic lens meant that there were thousands of “hidden peoples” who were completely overlooked because of the ethnic, linguistic, or cultural barriers that existed even within countries. A missions agency might consider a country reached because of a strong presence of Christianity among the majority ethnicity, but with their nation-state lens fail to see that the minority ethnicities were completely without a witness.
Starting in the late ’70s, this led to a paradigm shift in missions, where agencies adopted the primary lens of unreached people group (UPG). This ethnolinguistic lens also has biblical precedent, with a strong thread of God’s heart for all peoples (panta ta ethne) evident throughout the Bible. We see this focus on ethnicity and language in passages like Psalm 67:4, Isaiah 66:18, Daniel 7:14, and most famously, Rev 7:9, “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages…”
This lens seeks to recognize three other significant barriers to the gospel: ethnicity, language, and culture. It recognizes that humanity typically divides up into groups that identify as distinct from others around them along significant ethnic, language, or cultural lines. Sometimes ethnicity is the main barrier, where the same language is used and similar cultures exist, but neighboring people groups struggle to influence one another because of longstanding ethnic tensions. This is the case with many ethnic Christian groups in the Middle East and their Muslim neighbors, all of whom are fluent in Arabic.
Other situations show that focusing on ethnicity alone is not enough. Our own central Asian people group share a common ethnic identity with neighboring groups, but their languages are not mutually intelligible. In this case, language is the primary barrier, not ethnicity or culture. A missions agency might see the church take off in one of the dozen or so language groups of this ethnicity and consider their job done. In reality, this language barrier is going to prevent the spread of the gospel to the other segments of this ethnicity unless there is a very intentional effort.
Yet other situations show that culture can be the primary barrier. This is where things can get really murky, yet an honest appraisal of how humanity actually functions shows that this is often the case. Cultural differences provide significant barriers to the gospel. This is where socio-economic, religious, and even generational differences come into play – and evil things like caste. For evidence near at hand, consider how hard it is for middle-class churches to reach the poor and working class, and vice versa. It is very difficult for any of our churches in the West to truly impact subcultures different from ours that live within our own cities and towns, and this is with a shared history of Christianity. How much more might cultural differences prevent gospel impact among groups that have no Christian heritage? Even here there is biblical precedent for acknowledging this barrier. Many of the Jew-Gentile issues that Paul deals with in his letters are not just issues of religious background and conscience, they are issues of differing systems of culture and meaning – head coverings being one example.
The key is to recognize that multiple barriers exist to the spread of the gospel from one group of humans to another. These barriers might be political, geographic, ethnic, linguistic, or cultural. The Bible acknowledges all of them. That means we don’t have to lock ourselves into only one lens; rather, we should make use of all of the lenses the Bible gives us when we are seeking to discern why the gospel might be making inroads in one group and not among others.
Once we’ve recognized the primary barrier or barriers, then we are in a good place to discern if they are significant enough to warrant a separate church planting focus or not. Typically, I believe that geography and language do warrant separate approaches, while ethnicity and culture need to be taken on a more case-by-case basis. This needs a post of its own, but in brief, we must remember that the New Testament church brought Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian together into the same churches, messy and scandalous though that effort was. The splintering of missions strategy into hyper-specialized church planting efforts can often reinforce natural human divisions, rather than overcome them.
Deep divisions cut through lost humanity, cutting off whole countries, peoples, languages, and cultures from the good news of salvation through Jesus. Yet the Bible shows us that these can and will be overcome. To play our part in this we will need to take these barriers seriously, on the one hand, even as we trust that the simple gospel is powerful to conquer each and every one of them. We must work hard to understand and undermine these barriers, though our faith must not be in our ability to figure them out.
Carey understood “the Obligations of Christians to Use Means in the Conversion of the Heathen,” even as his faith was in the sovereign power of God to save the nations. May we follow in his footsteps – til every barrier falls.
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These two local sayings are used interchangeably for the same kinds of situations. Locals might proclaim one, or both of them, when they are expressing delight at seeing someone dear to them, or when they see a cute child. They might also use them as a very warm affirmative to a request, such as if you ask them if they would mind helping you understand how to pay your water bill. And when you see your mother’s third cousin’s teacher walking through the bazaar and you engage in the expected blast of honorable words to “outdo the other in showing honor,” these phrases will also then undoubtedly come out.
The first one about being your sacrifice is dramatic, for sure, but understandable. The person is using this hyperbolic saying to proclaim that they would (hypothetically) do anything for you, even die for you. There are still animal sacrifices in our Islamic context, mainly connected to religious feasts. Some would understand them as securing some kind of forgiveness of sin, but most see it simply as a religious tradition meant to bring joy to the family (through feasting on the meat) and care for the poor (since a portion of the sacrificed meat must be given away to the less fortunate). Unlike Christians in the West, every local has experience with what an animal sacrifice actually looks, feels, and smells like. They’ve seen their grandpa or uncle ritually slit the cow or sheep’s throat and seen its blood spill out all over the courtyard tiles. Many have also ceremonially stepped over the blood as it drains away in the street gutters. So even though they don’t mean it literally when they say they’ll be your sacrifice, it’s still a saying that can carry some real weight, depending on how it’s being used.
The second saying about being your alcohol waiter is a bit more mysterious. How did this come to be such a common and respectful saying in an Islamic context where alcohol is supposed to be forbidden? First, alcohol was definitely around over the centuries (and still is today) even if it’s supposed to be off-limits for good Muslims. A historic presence of Jews and ethnic Christians meant that Muslims could, and did, often buy alcohol from these communities. Second, quite the drinking culture emerged among the men during the second half of the twentieth century when our region was heavily influenced by secularism and modernity. Third, there’s always been areas of uneasy tension between the older indigenous culture of our people and certain Islamic laws and customs. Alcohol seems to be an area where some locals view the mainstream Islamic policy of teetotaling as a foreign imposition at odds with the traditional freedoms of their people.
But how did offering to be someone’s alcohol waiter come to be a proclamation of respect, service, and affection? This is quite the mystery, both to me and to my local friends. Regardless, I have seen old Muslim women who would never drink nor condone anyone else doing so saying this to my children as they kiss their cheeks. The resulting irony is hard to miss. A Muslim grandma is offering to be the alcohol waiter for an underaged child whose family is with a Christian missions organization with a no-alcohol policy – yet everyone is smiling and feels valued and respected. Language is such a strange thing sometimes.
All of this means that if Chick-Fil-A ever opens a branch in our area, their workers will have quite the range of local equivalents for their required response of “my pleasure.” And some of most polite among these would be, “I will be your sacrifice” and “I will be your alcohol waiter.”
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Our home church in Kentucky is quite diverse. Over the years, there has been in-service translation in a number of different languages. Currently, we have a crew of Afghan believers who sit up in the balcony. One of them with good English translates the sermon for his friends sitting around him. Occasionally, a brother preaching will use a particularly confusing idiom and I will glance up at their section, wondering if the translator will even make an attempt at that one or just let it go. There are times where he doesn’t seem to know what to do with a given phrase, and even from far away I can see the struggle. Should he try to translate it, and risk communicating the wrong meaning, or just let it go and hope it wasn’t too important of a point?
The same thing that makes idioms so useful (and even fun) is what also makes them so dangerous. Idioms are phrases that vividly communicate a package of meaning in their local language context, but a meaning that can’t be understand from the direct sense of the words themselves. Because they are missing the cultural and historical context, an outsider listening isn’t able to understand that the meaning of the whole is completely different from the meaning of the parts. Consider English idioms such as “break a leg” or “shoot the breeze.” If you were an English learner, how would you ever guess that these phrases mean “good luck” and “casual conversation,” respectively?
This can be true even in the same language, as I have I sometimes learned the hard way. “Shotgun wedding” did not mean what I thought it did. And yes, I learned this by using it in the wrong way around my future in-laws. Growing up as an American in Melanesia with missionaries from other English-speaking countries, we also found out that there were certain phrases of everyday American English that had very problematic meanings in other dialects of English. “Say I had a nose-bleed, not what you would say in America,” is one of these early lessons that I remember receiving from an Australian auntie.
But if idioms can be problematic even from one dialect of a language to another, they are exponentially more problematic when it comes to translation from one language to another. I’ve written before about the hazards of second-language sermons, where you think that saying “we trust in the person and work of Christ” means, simply, trusting in who Jesus is and what he did. But your trusty local-believer-sermon-checker just laughs and tells you that you just said we trust in the relatives of Jesus, since “person and work of” is a local idiom for someone’s kinfolk. Never mind when you offhandedly say things like “on fire for Jesus.”
When preaching in another language, one learns quickly to purge your English manuscript from as many idioms as possible, since the idioms of your language almost never translate directly – and even seemingly-direct phrases can prove to be local idioms. But if you are not preaching in another language, and instead preaching in your own tongue, it’s all too easy to forget about your idioms. If any of your congregation are non-native English speakers, or if there is any translation going on in your service, then for the sake of clarity, you’ve got to watch your idioms.
If you want to pay more attention to clarity in this area, here are some practical ways to do this:
Know your audience. Watching your idioms is very helpful if your audience is linguistically diverse. But if you are speaking (or writing, as I am here) primarily to native English speakers or those with very high levels of English, this is not as much of a concern.
Make sure your main points are not expressed in idiomatic language. This ensures that everyone present is at least able to understand the main outline of your teaching. Instead of “Christian, Jesus calls the shots,” say, “Christian, Jesus is our leader.”
Scan your manuscript beforehand for any idioms that could be replaced with simpler, more direct language. Then, replace as many of them as possible.
If you really like a given idiom, you can still use it, just be sure to define it when you use it. A simple half-sentence definition following the idiom means you can (ahem) have your cake and eat it too.
Regularly ask your translators or non-native English speaking attendees if there are phrases you use that are hard to understand. If you have a regular rhythm of sermon review, this could fit well into that time. If you have not learned another language, you might be unaware of what is idiomatic speech versus literal. In this case, believers from other language groups can help you learn how to “see” the idioms your language is full of.
Americans, watch your sports idioms. This is a very common area where American preachers, preachers, and writers assume common understanding when it’s often not there.
Pray for interpreters and translators. Their job is not easy and they often have limited time to weigh the pros and cons of a more meaning-based translation vs. word for word. Strive to make their job easier, not harder.
Preachers, our goal is clarity. Paul asks for prayer that he might make his proclamation of Christ clear, which is how he knows he ought to speak (Col 4:3-4). If Paul needed help with this, then so do we. Paying attention to our idioms can be one part of how we strive for greater clarity.
I’ll leave you with a classic video that highlights what can happen if you are preaching through translation. While it’s rarely ever this bad, many a missionary can indeed resonate with what is parodied here.
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The number of languages you know, the number of persons you are.
Local Oral Tradition
I learned this popular proverb early on when I was studying our Central Asian language. This saying presents the fascinating idea, common in the multilingual world of the Central Asia, that there is an expansive power inherent in language learning. According to our locals (and the neighboring people groups, who have an equivalent proverb in their languages also), there is some kind of astounding addition to your life that happens when you learn another language – an addition significant enough to grant you some kind of extra personhood.
Many years later I would find out that this proverb does not actually originate in Central Asia, but in medieval Europe. It was Charlemagne, Charles the Great, king of France and Emperor of much of western Europe who said, “To have a second language is to possess a second soul.” That’s quite the claim from Big Charlie, a king who was actually illiterate, though apparently gifted in speaking and understanding multiple languages. What was it that Charlemagne experienced that would cause him to make such an outlandish (and potentially heretical) claim? And how can you square this with the couple years of foreign language study you may have been forced to do in high school that made you feel not like you had gained an extra soul, but rather like you no longer had any soul left at all?
If you’ve never learned another language, or if your initial dabblings were as dry as saltine crackers baking on a North African sand dune, you’re going to have trust Charlemagne. You’re going to have to trust our Central Asian friends. You’re going to have to trust me. Or at least hear us out. Something expansive happens in your life, both inside you and around you, when you learn another language. And it makes all of the hard work absolutely worth it.
It’s not uncommon for polyglots, those who have learned many languages, to speak of having a different personality for each language that they speak. I only speak three languages, but I get what they are talking about. My parents are Americans, so I am a native American English speaker. But I was raised mostly in Melanesia, where I learned the Pidgin trade language as a toddler, and thus grew up bilingual. Then in college I spent a year volunteering in Central Asia, where I began to learn my third language. I would later return to the same region for seven years and eventually become an advanced speaker of that language. It’s a subtle thing, but yes, I think and I act differently depending on which language I’m operating in. I have, in some sense, gained a different side to myself, or rather found something that only that unique language and culture can draw out.
The author C.S. Lewis wrote something very similar in The Four Loves about the effect that different friends have on drawing out the unique facets of someone’s personhood, “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.” I would contend that languages have a similar effect on us. No one language is large enough to “call the whole man into activity.” Learning another language is like gaining another true friend, the kind who can bring you to life in unique, funny, and fascinating ways.
Have you ever considered that there may be facets to who you are that you can only discover by learning another language? No, not a second soul – but perhaps a part of your soul you’ve yet to become acquainted with.
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Asked in 1898 to choose a single defining event in recent history, the German chancellor Bismarck replied, ‘North America speaks English’. He was right, as the twentieth century showed. Twice the major powers of North America stepped in to determine the outcome of struggles that started in Europe, each time on the side of the English-speaking forces. Even more, the twentieth century’s technological revolutions in communications, telephones, films, car ownership, television, computing and the internet, were led overwhelmingly from English-speaking America, projecting its language across the world, to parts untouched even by the British Empire. It seems almost as if a world language revolution is following on, borne by the new media.
But though the spread of a language is seldom reversible, it is never secure. Even a language as broadly based as English is in the twenty-first century cannot be immune. It is still threatened by those old causes of language succession: changes in population growth, patterns of trade and cultural prestige. For all the recent technical mastery of English, nothing guarantees long-term pre-eminence in publishing, broadcasting or the World Wide Web. Technology, like the jungle, is neutral.
Ostler, Empires of the Word, xxi
One of the surprises found in the language history of the US is that because of immigration, German once stood a decent chance of taking over as the dominant language. To this day, the most common ethnic heritage of Americans is not English, but German. I wonder if the chancellor’s remark betrayed an awareness that masses of the German-speaking community were in fact being absorbed into another one – and that shifting allegiances would follow such a realignment.
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Since 2011, our people group have had the complete Bible in their language – both Old and New Testaments. This is an amazing thing. The translation and publication of the Bible into any language is usually a long tale with many different players. Someday, I’d like to put that more detailed story together. For now, this is the summarized version that I’ve managed to piece together through various conversations over the years. So, consider this a rough draft of the tale, not yet history in the carefully-researched sense.
The story begins with Kamal*, a prolific writer and educator among our people group during the turbulent 1970s. Kamal was a short man who always wore a distinctive floppy scarf-hat and had a passion for his people group’s suppressed language. In spite of this politically dangerous interest, Kamal’s reputation as a scholar and writer was so strong that he was put in charge of the education department of his province. However, it didn’t take much to fall foul of the ever-changing governments of the country during that era. Kamal seems to have written something or to have held a position that put him in hot water with whichever military dictator was in charge at that point. He was imprisoned in the south of the country, far away from the mountainous homeland of his people.
Many years later, when I attended his memorial service, I learned that it was while he was imprisoned and not yet a believer that he first committed to translating the Bible for his people. Apparently, Kamal had a dream where Jesus straight up told him to translate the Bible into his language. Kamal, wisely, agreed that he would. But he was in prison. How was he to accomplish this enormous project? God provided the means through a new cellmate, a Syriac priest – who had an old Syriac Bible with him. Kamal and the priest could communicate in the trade language of the country, so it seems that the priest would translate from Syriac into the trade language and then Kamal would craft each verse into his native tongue.
By the time he was let out of prison, Kamal seems to have come to faith and to have written a manuscript of the gospel of Luke, made up of loose papers. He moved back to his home city and neighborhood, just a few alleyways down from where my family recently lived in our old stone stone. There, he continued to write and teach, unsure of what to do with the Gospel of Luke manuscript that he kept in secret. Given the political and religious climate of the time, it was much too dangerous to attempt to work on it or publish it openly.
Just a few weeks ago at Cross Con ’24, I learned that this is where a Lebanese ministry leader enters the story. This now elderly leader told me that he had come to visit Kamal’s country, having independently developed a desire to see the Bible translated into Kamal’s language. This was a time of political intrigue, assassinations, and guerrilla warfare, so this ministry leader had to be very cautious as he asked around to see if there were any believers who would help him begin the translation. Somehow, he was directed to Teacher Kamal’s house, where a relieved Kamal handed him his precious stack of papers and told him to take them back to Lebanon to keep the translation moving along. At least at that point, the project was too dangerous to conduct inside the country.
Over the next couple decades, an international coalition of believers worked on the New Testament translation together. From what I understand, these were believers in Lebanon, Germany, France, and eventually back in Kamal’s country also. At this point much of the translation was being done from German, though later work was to be done directly from Greek and Hebrew. By the time the 90’s came, a British Bible translator, Alex* was living in a different city of Kamal’s region, and took on leadership of the project. Alex put together a translation team, including Kamal, and in the late 1990’s the New Testament was published. Although there were many revisions to come, the involvement of writers and poets like Kamal from the beginning gave the text a rich literary beauty in the local tongue.
By the time I was on the ground in 2007 as a green 19-year-old, this New Testament had been updated and had been eagerly adopted by the the community of local believers. The next year, Hama*, one of my close friends and a new believer, also managed to get his hands on one of the few early drafts of the complete Old Testament. I remember opening the massive three-ring binder with him and gazing together for the first time on Genesis and Psalms in his mother tongue. Hama treasured and studied this early text for years to come.
In 2011, the complete Bible was published for the first time. Decades of work by Alex, Kamal, the ministry leader from Lebanon, and others had led to the complete word of God now being available in our people’s heart language. Some communities of believers loved this 2011 text so much that they flat-out refused to use later revised editions, and started circulating illegally printed 2011 Bibles for their house churches – thus proving that KJV-only-style controversies are unfortunately not unique to the west.
The political and religious climate, while never calm, had grown much calmer since the 70’s. This has meant long stretches when this complete Bible can be spotted for sale in the bazaar’s book shops. To this day, someone on our teams might snap a picture when we see one prominently on display and send it to each other, “Look what I spotted in the bazaar today.” The government has even allowed a local church to set up at a huge annual book fair to sell these Bibles and other Christian books.
In spite of this measure of freedom, we still have many locals who don’t know that the Bible exists in their language. I’ve always loved asking if a given local knew that God’s word was available in their language. When they said no (as they often did) I would pull a print Bible out of my bag or open up a Bible app on my phone and show them a text like John 1:1, one of my favorite texts for explaining the divinity of Jesus. “You believe the eternal word of God became a physical book, right? Well, this verse says that the eternal word of God became a man.”
As I referred to earlier, I got to attend the memorial service for Kamal a few years ago, led by Alex and others. This was a public event, where hundreds of locals came out to honor the great writer. Few, however, knew of his role as the first Bible translator of their people. To my great delight, this part of Kamal’s story was told publicly, and a plea made for the attendees to read this book to which Kamal had devoted so many years of his life.
Kamal was obedient to the work that God gave him to do. So was the leader from Lebanon, and Alex, and many others. This has meant that as a church planter I have had the most important of all tools available to me – a Bible in the local tongue. It has meant that when I find a verse that seems a bit off in the word choice or grammar I have the privilege of simply emailing Alex for it to be considered for a future update. Sadly, most of the feedback these men get these days is suggestions and complaints from foreigners and locals for places where the the text needs to be revised!
Yet when we come to our senses we all realize what a great debt we owe these men. They have done something that is foundational for everything workers like myself try to accomplish. Cliche as it might seem, we really do stand on their shoulders. Many are aging fast and looking to hand off their work. Some of them are no longer with us, like Kamal. But I thank God for each of them, and someday I hope to write more of their stories.
Because of Kamal, the prisoner-scholar, his people now have a Bible. And that changes everything.
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Far more than princes, states, or economies, it is language-communities who are the real players in world history, persisting through the ages, clearly and consciously perceived by their speakers as symbols of identity, but nonetheless gradually changing, and perhaps splitting or even merging as the communities react to new realities. This interplay of languages is an aspect of history that has too long been neglected.
Ostler, Empires of the Word, xix.
While we know that the true “real players” in world history are spiritual forces, it’s wise to acknowledge the massive role that language communities have and continue to play as secondary movers in world history. As is the case with languages like Greek, Arabic, or English, a language “empire” can outlast the original political one that led to its rise, and continue to exert tremendous influence while wearing multiple new sets of political or national clothing.
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Entrusted to the Dirt 