Previously: Translators | Saints | Holy Here

What comes to your mind with the mention of “saints”?  People who pray a lot? Kind, generous people? Miracle-workers and martyrs? People in heaven?

Clearly, saints pray. The Bible also speaks about a dozen times of praying for saints.

What about praying to saints? In favor of this claim, the best Biblical reference I can cite is from James 5: “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power...”  What if my prayer partner—hopefully a righteous person—is in heaven? The record suggests that people in heaven are alive (Matt 22:31-33), and whether in Hades or Heaven they can remember their life experiences and can persist in their values. However, we don’t know if they can see or hear us now. God in heaven hears our prayers—but do saints in heaven? If interaction is the point of paired prayer, separation is a problem.

Hebrews 12:1-2 does not picture the dearly-departed watching us and cheering us on. How vain of us if we think that. Rather, in view of the saints' parade in Hebrews chapter 11, we are to let their faithful lives witness to us. Their examples encourage us to discipline and endurance. Foremost, we look to Jesus both as example and as the one who claimed, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Then he crushed sin and death and overcame the world. Why should we use a lobbyist when we have Jesus?

We have a great high priest who has gone into heaven, and he is Jesus the Son of God.
This is why we must hold on to what we have said about him.
Jesus understands every weakness of ours, because he was tempted
in every way that we are.
But he did not sin!
So whenever we are in need,
we should come
bravely
before the throne of our merciful God.
There we will be treated with undeserved grace, and we will find help.
Hebrews 4:14-16 (CEV)

What have we learned about the saints in the preceding looks at English translations?

(1) Paul opened his letters to Rome, Corinth, Colossae, Ephesus, and Philippi, each addressing “the saints”. Paul carried aid to "the saints" in Jerusalem.
(2) Said saints needed food, money, or release from jail. The saints needed prayer.
(3) Paul’s greetings note that people did not become saints by merit, but by God’s call.

We can add that (4) the New Testament letters mainly corrected the saints' bad choices, bad ideas, and infighting. The New Testament would be around half as long if the saints had been saintly.

But nevertheless Paul called them saints. When the Ephesians and others heard Paul call them “saints”, did they ask, “what’s a saint?” Is this like where Jesus tells Peter, “On this rock I will build my church,”—and Peter replies, “Thanks, Jesus! Uh, what’s a church?” Given that the English language wasn't invented until around seven hundred years later, what word or words did Paul use for "saints" and how did his recipients understand that word?

Online sites offer free tools to identify those original words and the cultural associations they probably held for their writers and readers. Let’s demonstrate. The screenshot here captures a web browser on my iPhone. It was opened to www.BibleGateway.com.

I typed Ephesians 4:12 and chose to search in the Mounce Reverse Interlinear New Testament. Then I tapped the search button 🔍.  The result follows below.

Aha! This shows that in Ephesians 4:12 the English word “saints” comes from the Greek word family of hagios.

Hagios is the representative from the family of words translated to “saints”.

Hagios is not necessarily the specific word used in Ephesians 4:12. We’ll come to that word soon. Like English, Greek has slightly different words for singular “saint”, plural “saints”, possessive “saint’s” or “saints’”, and more. The suffix on a Greek word communicates much more than in English.

“Interlinear” means that we start with the Greek or Hebrew source lines and with each source word list a corresponding translated word or phrase. “Reverse Interlinear” shown here means we start with a translation (such as the KJV, NIV, or ESV). Then with each word or phrase of the translation (like “saints”) comes the corresponding transliterated Greek or Hebrew source word family (such as hagios) or the specific source word (such as hagion) or  its Greek form (ἁγίων). Either way you do it, this is a quick way to find the corresponding source for a translation.

Footnote: if your aim is to master biblical Greek, an Interlinear is poison.  If your aim is to quickly identify a translation/source relationship, an Interlinear is an expedient, compact tool. Don't expect the crowded presentation to detail nuances or other usage. In this case, hagios applies to "saints". As we'll see, hagios can be the source of other translated words such as "holy" and "purified".

Here’s the good part: With BibleGateway Mounce Reverse Interlinear and other such tools, just click on saints or hagios.

Boom! We get details about the hagios family:  A short list of some ways hagios words are translated, and a long list of all the Bible verses in which hagios words appear.  See below.

Sigh. I thought I might be a saint.

However, the meanings associated with hagios intimidate me! 

  holy,
   consecrated,
      separate from common condition and use,
  dedicated,
     pure,
       righteous.

In short, saints are weirdos.

Of course, I’m joking—but not much. You’ll see. And I suppose “weirdo” does fit me.

That's the dictionary. Much later, I'll comment on dangers of dictionaries. They list many possible meanings or translations of a word, but might not identify the specific meaning or translation for a specific passage such as Ephesians 4:12.

The display here also starts a concordance, a list of all verses that contain some form of the Greek word hagios. These verses show trends in meaning.

Continuing the demo: If you see a link “everywhere hagios appears in the New Testament“, click it!

In some situations such as here, Bible Gateway just goes ahead and displays this list.  You can scroll down through 222 New Testament verses where some member of the hagios family appears. “Word family” is called “Lexical Form”. You will find that hagios words are all about holy things:

Holy Spirit, holy city, holy man, holy angels, holy child, holy name, holy prophets, holy covenant, holy kiss, …

Eventually we get to Ephesians 4:12.

Aha, in that verse the English word translated “saints” comes from the specific Greek word hagiōn (ἁγίων).

A little before that, in Ephesians 3:18, “saints” comes from hagiois.

BibleGateway also offers a Hebrew and Greek reverse interlinear for the New International Version—if you paid for the BibleGateway PLUS subscription. If you have not logged on as a PLUS user you can demonstrate this feature, but only occasional sample verses show the Greek text.  Open a passage in the New International Version, say Ephesians 4. Click the gear icon ⚙ to set Options. Turn on "Reverse Interlinear". As with Mounce, just click a word to see its source family.

My favorite free point-and-click Greek and Hebrew interlinear is at https://www.esv.org. In your web browser open that site. Register for a free login ID by clicking Sign In then Create an account. After login you have Greek and Hebrew tools that are otherwise hidden. The initial screen will display a Bible chapter.  Click on the title to select the book and chapter you want, or to pull up all verses for a word family or word.

Then in the upper left click the three dots ••• then Language Tools. This displays 3 choices: a Hebrew Old Testament, the 1995 NA28 Nestle-Aland, and the 2017 THGNT Tyndale House Greek New Testament.  I usually select Tyndale House. For now it is newer. This interlinear displays the specific Greek word such as hagion for Ephesians 12:4. Clicking on hagion or “saints” will display the hagios word family information, including a glossary entry and a list of verses. There are options (the  ••• on the right) to switch display between just Original Language, Interlinear, and Reverse Interlinear. Poke around, see what the other options do.

Yet another interlinear tool is at www.stepbible.org, a free service of Tyndale House, Cambridge, UK. This lets you stack or interleave source text together with several translations including non-English translations. Then with just a click on a word, get its brief definitions, grammatical notes, and concordance list of verses.

Sifting the Saints

Paul starts 1 Corinthians with his typically long greeting:

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,
to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified [hagiazō] in Christ Jesus,
called to be saints [hagios]
together with all those who in every place
call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I always thank my God for you...

After this warm opening embrace, Paul starts beating up the hagios saints.  By chapter 6, we get this:

You yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters. Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified [hagiazoi], you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

So I'm thinking, the saints at Corinth were not pretty figurines, too cool for school, too clean for the scene.  Maybe I can be a saint after all.  So I kept investigating the hagios family.

Hagios was not a new word. When speaking Greek, the Jews for hundreds of years had applied hagios to themselves. “We are God’s chosen people, God’s holy people, hagios.”

When speaking Greek, the Jews called Jerusalem the hagios polis, the holy city. The Bible? Hagios graphe, holy writings. For the Jew, hagios conveyed purity, cleanness, a ritually sanitary state. Hagios was about washing clean and staying clean. The Greek word hagios approximately translated the Hebrew word spoken as kodosh. Approximately. The old rabbis would sigh and point out that this Greek word hagios failed to convey the historical Hebrew kodosh attitudes of surrender, dedication, separation, and faithfulness to the Almighty and to his law.

When people look at me, when people look at you, they see a Bible translation.  Modern rabbi Abraham Heschel wisely observes that, “It may be difficult to convey to others what we think, but it is not difficult to convey to others what we live.”

Greek people hearing the Jews would roll their eyes. The Greeks of the first century AD used hagios in a broader sense than the Jews. Hagios described any objects of worship, any places of worship, any stuff associated with a supernatural being, anything inspiring awe, dread, or utmost caution. It could be from the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Jews, or the Greek pantheon.  Whatever prompted a call to Ghostbusters.

To the Greeks, hagios described something spooky, something awful, something… just… weird.

How do I in 2024 northern Virginia know what Jews and Greeks thought 2000 years ago?  One way is to search for translations like “saints”. Multiple uses give me multiple contexts. As a child I learned most of my native language not from a dictionary but from repeated collisions with contexts. Biblical contexts offer a sense of what the word meant to its users—as opposed to the way, after thousands of years, that word is used around moi. That inspection of contexts is what we have been doing here.

A second way is demonstrated above. Even without significant experience in Greek or Hebrew, you can use an interlinear translation to find the corresponding source language words such as hagios or hagion. Consider the brief definitions of that word. Use the concordance or search feature and consider the contexts you discover.

Paul uses the word “saints” a lot. More precisely, when talking about ordinary Christians, Paul uses hagios words over 38 times.   Yet Paul is hardly the only one reminding Christians about personal holiness. The Psalms reference the kodosh a dozen times. Peter in his first letter adds these word pictures:

As obedient children, do not be conformed
to the passions of your former ignorance, but as
he who called you is holy [hagion],
you also be holy [hagioi] in all your conduct.
...
But you are a chosen race,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation [hagios ethnos],
a people for his own possession,
that you may proclaim
the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people,
but now you are God's people.
Once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.

Be holy.  Live your title, saints! We can talk more about holiness in a rather later installment.

In my next installment, we must talk about dangers of word study that we blithely skipped here. Stay tuned.

Previously:  I ❤ Translators

In Part 1, “I ❤ Translators”, I started investigation of a persistent mystery of the Bible in Ephesians. Chapter 4 verse 7 starts clearly enough.

But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.

That quote uses the popular English Standard Version translation of the Bible. It translates from the language of almost 2000 years ago.

Verses 8-10 take a detour through the Older Testament. Then we get a sentence that in the ESV spans verses 11, 12, 13, and 14. It uses several words that puzzle me. These words give me an impression of important people doing important business.

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, …

The ESV  translation tries to be true to the source words. Most of the 63 informants at BibleGateway.com have that same word-oriented goal.

Other translators are thought-oriented. They have the goal of clarity.  I like clarity. I like clarity a lot.

I kinda know what apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers do. But what is a crummy “shepherd” doing with these big shots? Comic relief? Does the shepherd bring his own sheep?

This team, they “equip the saints”. What does this mean? Do they give the saints a box full of Bibles?

Once I figure out who "the saints" are, maybe I can figure out what it means to "equip the saints".

I pull up Ephesians 4:12 again. I stare at it. I look out the window. I stare at it some more.

Then I click Ephesians 4:12 in all English translations. 

Just one click, and bingo bongo, 63 translations arguing with each other. Some people would call them a jabbering mob.  I call them 63 witnesses.  So I get out some tally cards.  It takes work, but I boil the 63 down to at most 4 variations.  Head work saves leg work.

If you're following this on a phone, the table that follows looks better if you rotate to landscape mode.

In each column, the first item listed is the majority.  For example, “equipping” or “enabling” occurs in 38 of the 63 English versions at BibleGateway.com.  However, many of these are descendants of the same great-grandad 1611 King James Version. What's with "repairing"? How do you repair a saint?

I ought to go to Iason’s Pizza Palace to get the lowdown from the Greek informants that usually hang out there.  But it’s a dark and windy night. I expect trouble. I'll work with what I have. Which is just words, only words. 

In the old days, I could thumb through a honkin’ big concordance to find every verse about “saints”. Now, I fire up BibleGateway.com or a similar tool. Then I find a witness like the ESV, a witness that knows about saints. I ask that witness: Tell me: what else do you know about saints?  Where are they? What do they do?

Jackpot. The ESV has 81 verses about saints: 21 verses in Old Town and 60 in New Town.  Look at that. I see where the saints are and what they're up to.

List 1: Saints are everywhere. They're in all the big cities, even in the emperor's mansion. This is a honkin’ big operation!

1. Romans 1:7 “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
2. Romans 16:15 “Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them.”
3. 1 Corinthians 1:2 “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours”
4. 2 Corinthians 1:1 “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia, Grace to you…”
5. 2 Corinthians 13:13 “All the saints greet you.”
6. Ephesians 1:1 “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you…”
7. Philippians 1:1 “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you…”
8. Philippians 4:22 “All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household.”
9. Colossians 1:2 “To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace to you…”
10. Hebrews 13:24 “Greet all your leaders and all the saints. Those who come from Italy send you greetings.”

List 2: Saints are in trouble! It's a war!

1. Acts 9:13 “But Ananias answered, ‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem.’”
2. Acts 26:10 (Paul said) “And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them.”
3. Romans 12:13 “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”
4. Romans 15:25 “At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints.”
5. Romans 15:26 “For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem.”
6. 1 Corinthians 16:1 “Now concerning the collection for the saints: …”
7. 2 Corinthians 8:4 “begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints…”
8. 2 Corinthians 9:12 “For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.”
9. Ephesians 6:18 “…keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints,…”
10. Revelation 13:7 “Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them.”
11. Revelation 13:10 “If anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes; if anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword must he be slain. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.”
12. Revelation 14:12 “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.”
13. Revelation 16:6 “For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!”
14. Revelation 17:6 “And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”
15. Revelation 18:24 “And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth.”

List 3. Saints become saints by God's call.

1. Romans 1:7 "To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
2. 1 Corinthians 1:2 "To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:"
3. Ephesians 1:18 "having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,"

How about that? My hunches about saints weren’t quite right. They weren’t quite wrong. Some saints were jailbirds. Maybe still are. Some were poor. Maybe still are. Some are under attack.... They don't get to be saints by being tough or by scoring hits. They got to be saints because the Boss said they were saints.

The Catholic Boys, they say that we should pray to the saints that are in heaven. I don’t see that here. I do see that we should pray for the saints. These saints, they need prayer. They’re poor. They're needy.

 "Saints" go by other names too.  So I search the NIV for "his people". 121 hits in Old Town, 15 hits in New Town.  That's disappointing. But I know English translations can have different English words for the same source word. Choice depends on context.  Some translations make one English word from different source words. So I see saints in Ephesians 1:1. If I look at Ephesians 1:1 in the NIV, I find "God's holy people". Searching for "God's holy people" in the NIV gives me 9 more hits. I can learn a lot from just comparing translations. I still ought to track down, what is the source word in Ephesians 4:12?

What about “equipping” the saints? I search for “equip” in the ESV. Type the word, hit  🔍 . This turns up 14 hits in Old Town, mostly about getting ready for big fights. Like, “you equipped me with strength for the battle.” Hm. Good to know. Disappointing, there are just four cases of the English word "equip" in New Town. I still don't know what "equip" means for saints in Ephesians 4. There's still work to do. I hope the Greek can tell me more.

New glasses. Updated haircut. When you are fascinated with someone, you notice changes.  In December, Eric began a look at a Bible passage that has fascinated me, Ephesians 4:11-16. It begins:

“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets,
the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,
to equip his people for works of service…”

I noticed that the February quotation was the same but different:

“And he gave the apostles, the prophets,
the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
to equip the saints for the work of ministry…”

The December posts used the 2011 New International Version. Aha! The January-February installments used the 2001 English Standard Version. Differences:

   “Christ”          became pronoun “he”
   “pastors”       versus “shepherds”
   “his people”  versus “the saints”
   “service”        versus “ministry”
 
Does it matter that these translations differ? What’s the best translation of these verses? They seem to be saying that, Christ appoints leaders to bring about church or personal growth. To somebody. Who are “the saints”? Aren’t they, like, miracle-working Super Christians? How does one “equip” saints? Give them a gift card for Home Depot? Pass out Bibles? Doesn't the ministry require more dedication than rando works of service?

In this and subsequent articles I'll show how I resolved these questions to my satisfaction—at least until you put something in the comments. The tools I used, are online and free. You can use them too!

The New International Version of 1978 also sought “accuracy and clarity”. I bought weighty tools such as a 2000-page Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Greek New Testaments, lexicons, and other language tools.

Now it’s 2024 or later. You can access all of these Bibles and many more for free on your cell phone or computer! They have search capabilities and "display in all translations" capabilities and display multiple translations capabilities!

For example: Try a quick browser visit to BibleGateway.com. (There are also Bible.com, BibleHub.com, Biblia.com , BlueLetterBible.org, BibleArc.com, and  other Bible sites. I like the browser interface of BibleGateway. The BG app is puny, use a browser.) Type in the reference: Ephesians 4:12. You can abbreviate; for example, Eph4:12. BG will display the verse in the NIV or whatever translation you last selected.

You’ll also see a link, “Ephesians 4:12 in all English translations”. Hit that! 63 versions!  Now we meet Segal’s Law: “A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.”

Yes, English keeps on ch-ch-changing.  

Also: Diggers keep on digging.  That is, archaeologists continue to unearth source manuscripts or find them stored in a dusty museum or monastery. The Dead Sea Scrolls include manuscripts penned around 250 BC. However, the Dead Sea Scrolls did not see the light of day until 1946. Translators first consulted the Dead Sea Scrolls for the Revised Standard Version of 1952. Get this: Without going all Indiana Jones, you can inspect important ancient source manuscripts online! For free! As of 2020, here is Ephesians 4:11-12 from part of the P46 papyrus at the University of Michigan. P46 was penned around AD 210.

A given translation will set goals of formal accuracy versus readability. Consider the following translations of royals trash-talking in 1 Kings 20:11:

1. And the king of Israel answered and said, Tell him, Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off. (Authorized KJV  1769. Italics mark words not in source.)
2. Then the king of Israel replied, “Tell him, ‘He who straps on his weapons had better not boast like one who takes them off.’”          (New American Standard Bible 2020)
3. Ahab then answered, “Benhadad, don't brag before the fighting even begins. Wait and see if you live through it.”                            (Contemporary English Version 1995)
4. The king of Israel retorted, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch!”      (The Living Bible 1971)

These span the range of word-oriented “formal equivalence” (KJV, NASB) through thought-oriented “dynamic equivalence” (CEV), and impact-oriented “paraphrase” (TLB).  

Of course the question everyone asks is this:

I have four great answers for this question!

1. The best Bible translation is: the one you actually read.
2. The best Bible translation is: the one that is accurate and requires the least additional explanation. Often it is quite hard to be accurate, succinct, consistent, and clear. For ratings of a translation’s accuracy, consider evidence from trusted people. Then through comparisons, testing, and source language tools, grow to become one of those trusted people.
3. The best Bible translation is: two or more differing translations that you reconcile. Consider context of a given phrase then also check out how its words are used elsewhere.
4. The best Bible version not just accurately informs you, it affects you: it hurts and helps, it challenges and inspires, it leads you to action.  “Let your steadfast love comfort me… Your promise gives me life…” (Psalm 119) “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing people what is wrong in their lives, for correcting faults, and for teaching how to live right. Using the Scriptures, the person who serves God will be capable, having all that is needed to do every good work.” (Hebrews 4:12, 2 Tim 3:16-17)
   

Let’s return to the Ephesians 4:12 passage.  I identified the three phrases here. Then phrase-by-phrase I summarized the English language variations currently at BibleGateway.com. There are intriguing differences that struck me as not simply modern English synonyms: “equipping” vs “perfecting” vs “teaching”. What’s with “saints” vs “Christians” vs “God’s People”?  The definitive answer will be in understanding the source language, Bible-era Greek. I’ll continue this English-translation survey of Ephesians 4:11-16 in the next posting.  The following table shows decisions translators have made.

Next: Saints