Part II: The Words They Translated Away

1. GNOSIS / GINOSKO -- "KNOWLEDGE" #

Greek gnosis (noun) and ginosko (verb) mean knowing by direct acquaintance. Not knowing ABOUT God. Knowing God, the way you know a face.

Jesus himself defines eternal life with this verb:

"And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." -- John 17:3 (KJV). The verb is ginoskosin: that they might KNOW.

Not "believe a doctrine about." Know. The Hebrew prophets say the same thing: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6), using da'at, the Hebrew counterpart of gnosis.

Now look at the one verse every anti-Gnostic pulls out first, 1 Timothy 6:20. The Greek is "tes pseudonymou gnoseos" -- "the falsely named gnosis."

   KJV ....  "oppositions of science falsely so called"
   NIV ....  "the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge"
   ESV ....  "contradictions of what is falsely called 'knowledge'"
   NRSV ...  "contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge"
   NABRE ..  "the absurdities of so-called knowledge"

Read it carefully. The author condemns FALSE gnosis. That only makes sense if true gnosis exists. You do not warn people about counterfeit money in a world without money. Paul himself says "we know that we all have knowledge (gnosin)" (1 Corinthians 8:1) and counts "the word of knowledge" among the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:8).

The word was never the enemy. The word was the inheritance.

2. EKKLESIA -- "CHURCH" #

Ekklesia means "assembly," from ek-kaleo, "to call out." It was an ordinary civic word. The same Greek word is used in Acts 19:32, 39 and 41 for a rowdy crowd of pagan silversmiths in the theater at Ephesus -- and there even the KJV translates it "assembly."

But when the ekklesia belongs to Jesus, suddenly the translators write "church." Why?

Because they were told to. William Tyndale's New Testament (1526) translated ekklesia as "congregation." The bishops hated it. When King James' translators began work in 1604, the rules issued under Archbishop Richard Bancroft included this one (Rule 3): the old ecclesiastical words were to be kept, "the word church not to be translated congregation."

The English word "church" comes through Germanic from the Greek kyriakon, "the Lord's (house)" -- a building. Jesus gathered people. The translators gave you a building, a hierarchy, and a corporation.

   Matthew 16:18  "upon this rock I will build my ekklesia"

   KJV / NIV / ESV / NRSV / NABRE ......... "church"
   Tyndale 1526 ........................... "congregation"
   Literal ................................ "assembly", "called-out ones"

3. AION / AIONIOS -- "WORLD," "ETERNAL," "EVERLASTING" #

Aion means "age" -- a long span, an era. Aionios is the adjective: "of the age," "age-long," "belonging to the age to come."

In Matthew 28:20 Jesus promises to be with his followers "unto the end of the world" (KJV). The Greek is "tes synteleias tou aionos" -- the end of the AGE. The NIV, ESV, NRSV and NABRE all fix this to "the end of the age." The KJV turned an age into the world.

Now Matthew 25:46:

"And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal." (KJV)

Both "everlasting" and "eternal" translate the SAME Greek word, aionios. The NIV, ESV, NRSV and NABRE all render both as "eternal." Literal translations such as Young's Literal Translation (1862) render it "age-during."

Whether aionios means "unending" or "of the coming age" is debated by honest scholars. Fine. Here is why it matters: an entire theology of endless conscious torment, preached to terrify children, rests on choosing one meaning of one adjective and hiding the other from the reader.

And for the Valentinians, "aion" was not a stretch of time at all. The Aeons are the living powers of God inside the Pleroma (Part X). Same word. Translators flattened it into a clock.

4. SHEOL, HADES, GEHENNA, TARTARUS -- ALL "HELL" #

Four different words. One English word. Here is what was collapsed:

   WORD       LANGUAGE   ORIGINAL MEANING
   ---------  ---------  ------------------------------------------------
   Sheol      Hebrew     the grave, the shadowy place of all the dead,
                         righteous and wicked alike
   Hades      Greek      the underworld; the Greek equivalent of Sheol
   Gehenna    Greek from the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, where
              Hebrew     children were once burned to Molech (Jer 7:31)
   Tartaroo   Greek      "to cast into Tartarus" -- used once (2 Pet 2:4)

The KJV translates Sheol as "hell" in some places and "grave" in others -- for the same Hebrew word. Jacob mourning Joseph says "I will go down into the grave unto my son" (Genesis 37:35, Sheol). Job begs God, "O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave" (Job 14:13, Sheol). But in Psalm 16:10: "thou wilt not leave my soul in hell" -- Sheol again. If Sheol is hell, then Jacob and Job wanted to go to hell.

Compare Matthew 16:18, "the gates of ___ shall not prevail" (Greek: Hades):

   KJV ...... "the gates of hell"
   NIV ...... "the gates of Hades"
   ESV ...... "the gates of hell"
   NRSV ..... "the gates of Hades"
   NABRE .... "the gates of the netherworld"

And Matthew 5:22, Greek "ten geennan tou pyros":

   KJV ...... "hell fire"
   NIV ...... "the fire of hell"
   ESV ...... "the hell of fire"
   NRSV ..... "the hell of fire"
   NABRE .... "fiery Gehenna"

The Catholic NABRE, to its credit, keeps "Gehenna" -- a real valley you can walk through today. The word that built the medieval torture chamber, the word that sold indulgences to frightened peasants, was a mistranslation layered over a place name.

5. LOGOS -- "THE WORD" #

"In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1, KJV)

Logos means word, but also reason, meaning, ordering principle. Greek philosophers from Heraclitus onward used logos for the rational order of the cosmos. The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, called the Logos God's "firstborn" and image.

Here is what the official history never tells you: the very first known commentaries on the Gospel of John were written by Valentinians. Ptolemy, a disciple of Valentinus, read John's prologue as a map of the Pleroma -- Father, Grace, Only-Begotten, Truth, Word, Life, Human, Church -- and Irenaeus preserves that exegesis in order to attack it (Against Heresies 1.8.5). Heracleon, another Valentinian, wrote a full commentary on John; Origen quotes it dozens of times in his own Commentary on John.

The Gnostics did not run from John's Gospel. They were the first to take it seriously.

6. PNEUMA, PSYCHE, HYLE -- SPIRIT, SOUL, MATTER #

This is the heart of it. Paul divides human beings into types, and the translations blur it.

   1 Corinthians 2:14  "psychikos anthropos" -- literally "the SOULISH
                       person" -- does not receive the things of the
                       Spirit of God
   1 Corinthians 2:15  "ho pneumatikos" -- "the SPIRITUAL person"
                       judges all things, yet is judged by no one

How it was rendered in 2:14:

   KJV ...... "the natural man"
   NIV ...... "the person without the Spirit"
   ESV ...... "the natural person"
   NRSV ..... "those who are unspiritual"
   NABRE .... "the natural person"

Paul did not write "natural." He wrote psychikos -- "of the psyche, the soul." He contrasted the psychic person with the pneumatic person. The same pair returns in 1 Corinthians 15:44-46:

"It is sown a natural body (soma psychikon); it is raised a spiritual body (soma pneumatikon)... Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual." (KJV, Greek added)

And in 15:47-48 Paul adds the third term: the "earthy" human -- choikos, "made of dust." Earthly (choic or hylic), soulish (psychic), spiritual (pneumatic). Three kinds. That is not a Valentinian invention. That is Paul's vocabulary, used again in Jude 19: "sensual (psychikoi), having not the Spirit."

The Valentinians read Paul and saw exactly what was on the page. Elaine Pagels documented it in "The Gnostic Paul" (1975): second-century Valentinians claimed Paul as their apostle and read his letters as teaching for the spiritual. The translators then wrote "natural" and "unspiritual," and the threefold map of the soul disappeared from the English Bible.

7. METANOIA -- "REPENTANCE" VS "DO PENANCE" #

Metanoia is built from meta (beyond, after, change) and nous (mind). It means a change of mind -- a turning of the whole inner self. An awakening.

John the Baptist cries "metanoeite!" (Matthew 3:2). Watch what the Latin Church did with it:

   Greek .............. metanoeite           "change your mind / turn"
   Latin Vulgate ...... paenitentiam agite   "do penance"
   Douay-Rheims 1582 .. "Do penance: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"
   KJV ................ "Repent ye"
   NIV/ESV/NRSV/NABRE . "Repent"

"Do penance" turned an inner awakening into an outward transaction administered by priests: confess, receive a penance, perform it. That single rendering fed a thousand years of the penitential system -- and the sale of indulgences that grew out of it. Erasmus challenged it in 1516; Luther built his first thesis on it in 1517. Full story in Part VI.

8. ALMAH -- "VIRGIN" OR "YOUNG WOMAN"? (ISAIAH 7:14) #

Isaiah 7:14 in Hebrew: "ha-almah harah" -- "the almah is pregnant / will conceive." Almah means a young woman of marriageable age. Hebrew has a more specific word for virgin, betulah. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (the Septuagint), almah was rendered parthenos, and Matthew 1:23 quotes that Greek.

   KJV ...... "a virgin shall conceive"
   NIV ...... "The virgin will conceive"
   ESV ...... "the virgin shall conceive"
   NRSV ..... "the young woman is with child"
   NABRE .... "the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son"

Yes, the official Catholic Bible in America says "young woman." So does the NRSV. In its own context, Isaiah gives the sign to King Ahaz about the Syro- Ephraimite war of his own day (Isaiah 7:1-16).

We are not here to mock anyone's devotion to Mary. We are here to show that a doctrine was hung on a translation choice. And note what the Valentinian Gospel of Philip says:

"Some said, 'Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit.' They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman?" -- Gospel of Philip, NHC II,3 55:23-27 (Robinson)

Why "a woman"? Because in Hebrew and Aramaic the Spirit -- ruach -- is grammatically feminine.

9. RUACH -- THE FEMININE SPIRIT #

"And the Spirit of God (ruach elohim) moved upon the face of the waters." (Genesis 1:2, KJV). Ruach is breath, wind, spirit -- and it takes feminine grammar in Hebrew. The verb for "moved" (merachefet) is feminine too; it is used elsewhere for an eagle hovering over its young (Deuteronomy 32:11).

Greek pneuma is neuter. Latin spiritus is masculine. By the time the doctrine reached you, the hovering mother-bird of Genesis had become "He."

The Gnostics remembered her. They called her Sophia, Wisdom -- the same Wisdom who says in Proverbs 8:22-23, "The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was."

10. WHAT THE WORDS TELL YOU #

   WHAT THE TEXT SAYS                  WHAT YOU WERE TOLD
   ----------------------------------  ----------------------------------
   gnosis -- know God directly         believe what the Church teaches
   ekklesia -- an assembly of people   the Church, an institution
   aionios -- of the age               eternal, everlasting torment
   Sheol / Gehenna -- grave / valley   hell, a torture chamber
   logos -- the ordering Word          a creed about the Word
   psychikos / pneumatikos             "natural" / "spiritual"
   metanoia -- change of mind          do penance
   almah -- young woman                virgin
   ruach -- She, the Spirit            He

None of this is secret. It is in every Greek lexicon and Hebrew grammar. It was simply never preached to you.