(P)Review Bible Study: Why I Don't Speak Chinese....The joys of verb tense.

     But what are they dreaming about....

    Much of my life has been spent studying language.  Part of this is due to the basic requirements of higher education, but if I am being honest, I really like languages.  
    In order to get into college I needed to show that I had studied four semesters worth of a foreign language.  So, I took Spanish in high school for four semesters from a very nice Cuban ex-pat who told all sorts of thrilling stories about when her family escaped Castro and came to America (I still speak Spanish with a Cuban accent).  Then in college even though I had to have four semesters of a foreign language to get into college, they insisted that I take four semesters of foreign language to get my degree.  So, I took four more semesters of Spanish (The Cuban accent managed to survive the Castilian accent of my one professor from Bar"th"elona as well as the Mexican accent of my other professor from Mexico City).  But, I wanted to be a lawyer so I took a semester of Latin thinking that it would be helpful in Law...it isn't.  Then I decided to become a minister and so, I took four semesters of Ionian (ancient) Greek to prepare for seminary.  When I got to seminary the wanted me to take....you guessed it: Greek.  So I took two semesters worth of Koine (only slightly less ancient) Greek.  If that all was not enough I also got to take two semesters of Hebrew, because more than half the Bible is in Hebrew, you know.  

    So, to be clear I have spent a LOT of time learning foreign languages.  Some languages are easier. For example, I never had any problems with Spanish: the verb tenses make sense, the spelling is phonetic and logical, and the accent is even fun to do....but Hebrew on the other hand was a bear.  The language is written right to left, the alphabet is tricky, they have no vowels in their words just a system of accent marks to delineate which vowel to say, and their prepositions are all written like contractions.  It was a nightmare.   But, it could have been worse.

 For sheer nightmarish confusion try the six-tense language Kalaw Lagaw Ya of Australia that has the remote past, the recent past, the today past, the present, the today/near future and the remote future.

Imagine speaking that language where you have to stop and think how far a thing happened in the past before you could even compose a sentence.  However, as bad as that is the real prize goes to Mandarin, the language spoken by a majority of China.  

  Not only is Mandarin an inflected language, which means that how you pitch your voice can change the meaning of a word, it also has no alphabet. Every word in Mandarin has a picture that represents it called an ideogram.  It is devilishly hard to translated which leads to some pretty hilarious mis-translations.  But one of the biggest problems with the language is that it actually has no verb tense.  Every single verb is in the present tense.  So you would say:  Today I eat an apple. Yesterday I eat an apple.  Tomorrow I eat an apple.  Last year I eat an apple.  When I am seventy five I eat an apple...you get the point. If you listen to the grammatical mistakes a Mandarin speaker makes when speaking English you will notice that verb tense (past, present, future) is the most common mistake.  
    So, each week when I sit down to write this I drag out my old

Nestle-Aland Greek language Bible and my Hebrew Bible and take a peek at the text in the original language to see if anything jumps out at me.That picture there is my old Greek buddy that has sat on my desk for twenty years.  Sometimes there is nothing different between the English and Greek/Hebrew and some days I look at it and wonder why the translators made the decision they made.  Today as I peruse the various translations and original versions is one of those days when something jumps out.  The text for this coming Sunday is from the first chapter of Matthew and it goes like this:

Matthew 1:18-25  

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."  When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

    Now, I would love to take credit for this catch but I was having breakfast with the Bishop this week and he first pointed it out: there is a mistake in the English translation in verse 24.  I looked it up in my Greek text and sure enough Matthew correctly translated the word "Emmanuel" from Hebrew, but our English translators did not let it be what it should have been.  Emmanuel does NOT mean "God is with us".  
    As Matthew correctly translates Emmanuel it means:

"Μεθ’ ἡμῶν ὁ Θεός" or, correctly in English:  "God With Us" not "God IS with us". OK...I hear you...no it isn't exactly the biggest nit to pick but there is a point to be had here. When Isaiah first writes the name Emmanuel ("Immanu": with us..."El":God) he intentionally leaves the verb, with it's tense, out.  So does Matthew.  Why?  Because it is supposed to be like Mandarin Chinese, it has no time signature attached to it.  God is with you today, God is with you yesterday, God is with you tomorrow.... Yes, Jesus came at that moment to be the savior in that time period but it isn't like he spent the rest of all time sitting around on his hands, and it isn't like he has spent the last two thousand years sitting on the bench waiting for his return.  Jesus is the God who is with us, has always been with us, will always be with us.  He is Emmanuel, God-With-Us. 
    Now, lets take a breather from all that linguistic heavy lifting and let the God-With-Us-Ness of Jesus settle in for a moment.  How is this important?  What does it matter that Jesus is/was/will be with us?  The answer is that Jesus being "with us" isn't just a bi-product of Jesus saving our souls from Hell so we can go to Heaven one day with him.  God-With-Us is literally his middle name:  Jesus God-With-Us Bar'Joseph (Bar'Joseph would have been Jesus' actual last name by the way, no one ever points that out for some reason). So, it's right there in his name that the whole point of his ministry is so that he can be with us, and us with him.  
    Jesus did not come to Earth to make you feel guilty for all the things you do wrong.  Jesus did not come to Earth to make sure that you have fire insurance for when you died and did not have to go to Hell.  Jesus came to engage you and me in a real, day to day, relationship.  He came to be with us, and he still is with us and this fact changes everything.  
     When we face the challenges of this world, we don't face them alone.  When we need a shoulder to cry on, his is always there. When we are celebrating success he cheers along with us.  When we walk through the tough times he slogs right next to us.  When we need to know right from wrong we don't have to rely on our own stilted and limited perceptions.  Never alone, and never forgotten we are the beneficiaries of his verb-less name.  God with us: yesterday, today, tomorrow.