We often think of truth, repentance and other concepts as core parts of the gospel that we “obviously” understand.
Take Repentance as an example. It turns out that Repentance has a different meaning in the koine Greek of the Bible than many sometimes give it. Sometimes simple language differences do make a difference in what we understand.
Other times, the original language fits our doctrine better than the words we often use or the way others use them.
Repentance in the Greek is a process rather than a single event which makes a good example.
To quote a scholar with a great deal more background than I have:
Now [the differences in the way the language is working], this might not be a big deal when we’re talking about sitting in a chair.
But suppose you’re translating a sacred text, and you’re working with a sentence like, oh, let’s say “I repent.”
So maybe in English that becomes “I am repenting.” Or “I repent.” Or “I keep repenting.”
But in each of these cases, the English suggests either a finite activity that is happening now but will either be over in a moment or (in the case of “I keep repenting”) a finite activity that will have to be repeated.
It’s a transactional activity: it happens, then it’s done. Unless you repeat it.
But maybe in the original language, the verb tense suggests an ongoing activity that you are continually engaged in—an ongoing process, a continuous transformation rather than a one-time or iterable transaction.
From Stant Litore
At other times, the language difference is transformative, as in the case of the word for “Truth” which we use to translate the Greek word Aletheia.
“How different might our society be, if more communities of faith today experienced truth not as a list of intellectual positions or beliefs, but as the ongoing aletheia (unforgetting) of promises made, the unforgetting of relationships with God and with other human beings, whom God loves?
That gorgeous word aletheia doesn’t have a precise equivalent in modern English; we compromise by continuing to translate it “truth.”
William Tyndale and, later, the translation committee who produced the Authorized Version commissioned by King James I settled on our word troth or truth, which at the time meant “a promise” in English.
That meaning still exists today in our word betrothed—one who is promised to another—or in the archaic phrase “to pledge our troth.” Truth (a promise) is something you pledge to another or something pledged to you, to which you hold fast.
We have kept the word over the centuries in our Bible because that word has become sacred to us. But English has changed over the centuries.
When we hear the word truth now, we no longer hear a “promise”—”—
Lives of Unforgetting: What We Lose in Translation When We Read the Bible, and A Way of Reading the Bible as a Call to Adventure by Stant Litore
The impact of the meaning of the word we now translate as “Truth” is strong when we look at core doctrinal statements.
“When Jesus says “I am the Truth” in John 14: 6, he is not saying ‘I am the Fact’ or ‘I am a List of Things for You to Believe.’
In the Greek text, he is saying “I am the Unforgetting”: I am the incarnation of the Unforgetting of God and his promises; I am literally God’s Unforgetting of you, in my birth and in my death and resurrection. I am the unconcealing and unforgetting of God; I am the opposite of Lethe because I am not the water of forgetting but the water of life, the water that fills you so you need not thirst; I am the Resurrection and the Life.”
The word that means unforgetting and unconcealing also can mean remembering and revealing. Thus the scriptural references to God revealed in Christ and the promises in the Bible that God will not forget us are tied to the concept of “God is a God of Truth” and an approach that is not about lists of facts or things or knowledge.
I’ve kept my citations and the quotes limited in number in order to keep this post short and to keep it more focused.
While I think that just about all of our readers will have had the experience of being taught and thinking about repentance as a process how many of our readers thought of Christ “as the way, the truth and the light” being “the way, the revealing and remembering, the light”?
What other meanings have you found in studying the scriptures that come up when you look at translations and what the words meant, vs. how they are often used now?
What do you think?
For reference, see https://biblehub.com/john/14-6.htm and how not a single translation sees a need to recapture the original meaning of the word now translated as truth.
Wheat & Tares 
In KJV and other modern Bibles, John the Baptist calls on others to “repent and be baptized” — but in the Geneva Bible (51 years before KJV, John says “amend your lives and be baptized.” These may have had the same meaning hundreds of years ago, but today, the word “repent” seems to have accumulated a lot of baggage. Today, it seems to me, “repent” is more backwards-looking while “amend your lives” is more present- and future-looking. Today, “repent” seems to require sorrow, but “amend your lives” simply means amend your lives.
I love and support the KJV. But I found this small nuance to be interesting when I was reading the Geneva Bible. The words haven’t changed, but our definitions of the words may have changed.
Litore’s understanding of “truth” in the NT is a challenge to meanings assigned by some Mormons to “the Church is true” and to D&C 1:30. Of course “the Church is true” means many different things when used by a variety of Mormons anyway — some of them aware of various meanings, some not.
Other English words that have substantially changed meaning include “peculiar” and “conversation.”
I’m too lazy to look up the details, but my recollection is the term used for “repentance” in the NT implies turning and looking/moving/living in a different direction. In other words, “Repent!” means “Change your life!” That was the proper response to hearing the proclamation of the good news of the coming Kingdom of God. That’s all right there in Mark chapter 1. The Christian Church, then the Catholic Church, turned that into a performance of confession and penance — a gross misunderstanding of considerable institutional utility from which we are still trying to recover.
I wouldn’t be too quick to adopt “unforgetting” as a better definition of truth. Plato saw truth that way because he thought all knowledge was a recollection of previously known but forgotten truth. To Plato, ultimate truth was that collection of transcendental Forms or Ideas that both pre-exists and transcends our puny human lives. We struggle and strive to grasping those transcendental Ideas through rational exercises. Now if you are a Latter-day Platonist, maybe “unforgetting” is a good way to think of truth. But true Platonists are a rare thing in the 21st century. If you’re a Latter-day Hegelian, however, truth is still growing and developing. It’s getting bigger, and we discover pieces as we go along, both individually and collectively. It was Hegel who quipped, “The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.” In that view, we discover or even create truth rather than recollect it. Most of us are Hegelians without realizing it.
You know, it’s interesting. The “newer” translations you mention, things like “the revealing” and “the remembering” imply a more subjective, individual approach to worship and faith rather than a more universalizing (though still highly problematic) term like “truth”. And the whole idea of translation in a Mormon context is highly problematic, especially considering the way we use the word “translation” when we refer to the way that Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon. There was simply no “translation” involved in the sense that the word is generally used. Joseph Smith had extremely limited knowledge of ancient languages and absolutely no formal training when it came the kind of scholarly translating that most of us mean when we use the word. And discussions about nuanced language and different meanings and implications than the Mormon party line would certainly not play well in my ward.
And to Dave B.: How would you address the other notion of “unforgetting” that Mormonism teaches; the idea of the pre-existence and how there’s a veil of forgetting that prevents us from remembering that pre-mortal life? That particular kind of forgetting seems like it might be relevant in a Platonic context. Just wondering what your thoughts were about that.
Yes, Dave B, but now you seem to be talking about truth as knowledge of propositions about ultimate reality. It seemed to me that Litore was writing about what KJV “truth” means in the Greek NT. While he may be right or wrong about that (I don’t know NT Greek — one semester long ago was insufficient and didn’t stick), if he’s right he seems to be talking about remembering and keeping promises and living one’s life trusting in promises made by others and not about “truth” in the sense Plato, Hegel, you, and most of us are now used to thinking of the word.
from an on-line etymological dictionary:
truth (n.)
Old English triewð (West Saxon), treowð (Mercian) “faith, faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty; veracity, quality of being true; pledge, covenant,” from Germanic abstract noun *treuwitho, from Proto-Germanic treuwaz “having or characterized by good faith,” from PIE *drew-o-, a suffixed form of the root *deru- “be firm, solid, steadfast.” With Germanic abstract noun suffix *-itho (see -th (2)).
Sense of “something that is true” is first recorded mid-14c. Meaning “accuracy, correctness” is from 1560s.
The KJV use of “truth” is said to have been derived, like much of the KJV, from the earlier translation by William Tyndale (c. 1494–1536).
And just for fun, see the invective hurled back and forth between Thomas More and Tyndale. Early 16th century theological debates were pretty lively.
https://stantlitore.com/2017/01/23/aletheia-or-what-is-truth/
I hate to lower the intellectual tone of the discussion, I really do. But when we are part of an organization whose apologists can suggest that “skin” isn’t skin and that “white and delightsome” doesn’t refer to skin color, it’s hard to take the leap to debating the real meaning of the word “repentance”.
This is a wonderful post. Far too many young people have a complete misunderstanding of what repentance means. The do think it is a one time action that is simply “done” and is “over.” They think they can drink beer and frolic like demented stoats, repent, and repeat with no consequences. That is not what repentance means. Repentance is a process in which one changes one’s very nature. It was never meant to be a box to check off periodically while continuing in a life of debauchery.
Googling “frolicking demented stoats”…….
You know, stoats are quite cute. Looks like frolicking with them might be kinda fun. Thanks for the tip.
Dave. Unveiling or discovering truth is somewhat Hegelian. I had not thought of that until you pointed it out.
Wondering. Yes. Truth and troth are cognomens in earlier versions of English, something we have lost.
The God is a God of truth who remembers us (rather than a collection of facts) is a focus different from our seeking truth.
Thanks for making me see the mirror.
Okay, who’s using JCS’s name without his permission? I refuse to believe that a comment that makes no mention of crocs or violent video games was actually authored by him!
Ziff, you got frollicking demented stoats. What more do you want??
I love these kinds of posts. And there are so many words that have changed meaning. My favorite is virtue, which used to mean something more like the power to do good. (Finally Jesus feeling virtue go out at the woman’s touch made sense.) Profane was simply something that is not sacred. To prophesy meant to speak under the influence of the Spirit. A harlot was a person who worshiped idols. It even works for our modern scriptures. Professors of religion are those who profess to believe, not teachers in higher education. And herbs were what we now call vegetables. But truth wasn’t on my list, so thanks for that!
JCS might have been ferret legging