By: Wayne Leman

Wayne Leman — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 23:03:54 +0000

Good stuff, Mike. Clearly written. It helped me understand better what Jesus was *really* communicating to Nathanael. We miss too much of the original meaning of biblical texts when we translate “only what the text says.” If we don’t include what the original author meant and intended his audience to understand by what he said, we have only translated part of the meaning to English or any other language. I suppose we could add a fair amount of pragmatic meaning in footnotes, but I find it easier to follow if my old eyes don’t have to switch back and forth between the translated text and its footnotes.

So, I guess we need a nice wedding between pragmatics and Relevance Theory to get complete Bible translation.

By: Mike Sangrey

Mike Sangrey — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 21:57:24 +0000

Above I said, “In my opinion, an understanding of pragmatic effect is vital to the proper exegesis of this text: It is John 1:50-51.

Let me explore and illustrate the results of Pragmatic Effect by offering a suggested translation. To be clear, the pragmatic effect of the “interruption” is to create a rather substantial ‘pause’, a pregnant pause, if you will. This strong pause places a strong emphasis on what follows. In this case it also creates a strong adversative. The semantic meaning of the pre-positioned, double AMEN further adds to this effect.

There’s also two pieces of implicit information we need: One, it was common practice for a relatively devout Jew to be regularly seen under a fig tree. In other words, Nathanael being under a fig tree was not only not unusual, but highly likely. And, two, there’s an allusion to Jacob’s ladder which would have been quite obvious to the original readers, especially to Nathanael.

These three observations–pregnant pause, the common practice under the fig tree, and Jacob’s ladder–all have to do with pragmatics (ie. semantic meaning interacting with context). Together, they produce a translation (into modern English and Western culture) something like the following:

Jesus replied, “I told you I saw you under a fig tree and you place your faith in me? You believe too easily.” Jesus paused for a brief moment. “Now, consider very carefully what I’m about to say. The Son of Man is the ladder by which God’s messengers travel between an opened heaven and this earth.”

Note: I’ve added the reference to the ladder metaphor and the phrase “between an opened heaven and this earth” to make explicit the obvious allusion to Jacob’s ladder.

The rhetorical impact of this is for Jesus, at the culmination of the Johanine introduction, to make a very strong claim about who he is. Essentially, the claim here perfectly matches the claim in John 1:1-18. Jesus is the conduit to carry God’s message–He is God’s Word to mankind.

Comments on: Is it mean to not mean what you mean?

By: Wayne Leman

By: Mike Sangrey