You are correct, John did not. But he took the word, as his hearers understood it, and applied it to the Christ. That’s really quite clever!

First question is, who were the Romans who would have understood John?

The only Romans were in Rome. However, when Jesus was alive and for some time after that, the widespread government was that of the Roman Empire. The area they ruled included Palestine. The language of widespread communication was Greek.

And why Romans?

Perhaps you mean “Why Greek?” Because that was the language of the Empire and the writings of the New Testament authors would reach far more people in Greek than in Aramaic, spoken in Palestine. The Jews of the Diaspora were already speaking Greek and that called for the translation of their Hebrew Bible into Greek (LXX) quite some time before Jesus was born.

Is it not possible that John is heavily influenced by his Jewish roots?

It is not only possible, but it is very true. There is much influence from the Jewish roots of N.T. authors throughout the N.T.

Just as Paul started with the known in Athens (“the unknown god”) and told the Athenians about what they did not know, Jesus as Savior, so John started with a known Greek philosophical concept, encapsulated in the word Logos, and applied it to the Christ. That’s powerful! In many cultures and languages throughout the world, the message of God gets spoken to people in their own languages. That message uses words people already know, are already speaking, and teaches them something new and important with those words.

That is something to celebrate! It is still happening today, throughout the world, including in English, when people read or hear the Bible in the English that they already know. I remember how powerfully some new versions of English Bibles spoke to me as a young person because they were written in my own heart language, English, not a previous dialect of English or an English only spoken in a limited sphere, that of the church I attended.

Kurk, I think it’s hard but hopefully not impossible to make a natural translation with nuances. And that website has plenty more great stuff, but I realized it’s all classical. Too many optatives makes my head spin.

And since the biblical writers, esp. in the NT, frequently subverted current language for theological ends, translations must do the same.
Well, I can think of Paul’s pun greeting of charis kai eirene. Charis was used in place of the more usual chairein, right? This may not be a particularly crucial example, but language in the NT was adopted in unusual ways. Or “overcoming” (nikao) in Revelation referring to martyrdom. That’s a true paradox. Or for that matter, war language in general being used in reference to specifically non-military activities throughout the NT.

But I confess/admit/concur that I probably am misunderstanding you, Wayne.

Thanks Wayne! The distinction you’re making here, I confess, is not always as easy for me to make. Willis Barnstone tends to muddy this all up for me when he talks of the KJV as an English “Version” that “took not less than eighty percent of its New Testament directly from [the English of] Tyndale’s translation, albeit elevating its rhetoric to its own splendor” (p 62, Restored New Testament). Last night, a friend read to several of us from the KJV, and, quite honestly, every one of us went scrambling to our own other favorite versions and translations to see what that was saying. And yet, your questions get me asking, What really is “current English”? I do appreciate your work on this!

Gary, Yes – my friends call me Kurk, so please do. You “wish that we could wave a magic wand and dramatically increase the average reading level, but with that not a realistic option, what can we do to harmonize this tension?” I do see what you mean; and yet, does a Bible translation that “sounds natural to readers” have to sacrifice being, as you say, “nuanced”?

The trouble I have with Wayne’s field testing is not necessarily that the minority (i.e., “educated” readers who can handle “cognitive dissonance”) skew his majority (i.e., those who would not use, for example, “confess myself …”). The trouble is that the majority in the survey (whether via blog comments here) or a professional linguistic survey cannot so easily describe their own preferences. As a linguist, I have seen people saying one thing in public and quite other things in private, contradictory things, about their language. The language that we all can and do allow is not just a tolerance of funny-sounding words, it is also language that is playful, inventive, creative and so forth. If we won’t allow English wordplay (and I mean play in 2009 with words such as “confess”) then we might not acknowledge wordplay (i.e., meanings that Paul or John or Luke have, unintended by them but seen by readers) in Greek. (Gary, thanks for the link to Socrates’s fun!)

Carl, Wonderful comment! Thanks for bringing in Greek in this discussion and for talking about your own English too.

Maybe I ought to try it using “declare” and see if I get a reaction out of the people?

I apologize for making a tangential comment, but perhaps we could ask Socrates to give us his impressions on American football. A friend of mine just showed me this site, and I find it fascinating. Since I don’t read Classical, I only understand about half of this article. Other articles seem to be in Koine (or at least are intelligible to me).