Obstacle 5: The Lord Jesus, starting in Mark

In the endearing little love story between Tina and Archie we saw Tina is the church and Archie is the Lord Jesus Christ. The old-fashioned name "Archie" that Archie wants to change is "Lord". 

I believe a translation overhaul is needed for "Lord" in many modern Bible translations both in English and other languages. This overhaul is necessary for a relevant and yet faithful religious institution like Christianity.

The Number 1 question was how to translate the Hebrew name for God, "Yahweh". I finally arrived, after two years of researching the issue, at the idea that GOD, all caps, would be a good solution. Eugene Peterson got there first though!

This only makes the suggestion all the more palatable, as I have arrived at the same destination as Peterson but via, I am sure, a different route, bringing more grammatical substance than Peterson's work had access to.

Overcoming Hurdle 5: The Lord Jesus 

If you make this move - to switch the Yahweh translation from "The LORD" to "GOD", then there are some fresh problems to solve - I identify five of these. Overcoming the first obstacle, we established that it is more than faithful to ancient tradition to apply the lower case "g" to god, permitting the possessive "GOD, our god". Overcoming the second, we realised that often "Lord of lords" can be replaced by "king of kings", condensed or even "Commander-in-Chief". Overcoming the third, we addressed the issue of "Divine Combos" where we steered clear of the risk of redundant repetition. Overcoming the fourth was quite a task but essentially boiled down to a set of criteria for identifying unambiguous references to the Kyrios of the Old Testament (while including clear justification of two main identities traditionally both designated "the Lord").

This now leaves us excellently placed to approach the fifth and perhaps toughest hurdle: The Lord Jesus Christ. 

In the preamble to each of these treatments of the obstacles faced by any program to remove Lord language from the Bible I have referenced Eugene Peterson groundbreaking translation, The Message. In this translation there are obviously thousands fewer occurrences of "the lord" because of the translator's excellent choice of GOD for Yahweh. But I failed to mention quite what he did with Adonai, which is relevant to our current Obstacle. Peterson really is pretty consistent at avoiding lordship language and with Adonai translates (my) Master. And he does the same with Jesus. Job done? 

I'm not sure. The problem with Kyrios in Koine Greek is that packed into "Kyrios", especially for a Hellenistic Jew, you have an extraordinary breadth of potential signification, the precise meaning of which will only become apparent within the context of the dialogue, discourse, text, etc. 

So whereas in modern languages our titles of authority have mushroomed into a confusing sub-language unto itself, ancient languages had fewer choices - the important nuances were drawn from surrounding context. But let us just say for the sake of simplicity that Kyrios covers at least three important layers of authority: 

Kyrios-God, both Creator and god of the Jewish people 
Kyrios-Ruler, emperor established ruler of the people for a designated area and its inhabitants; royal family members 
Kyrios-Boss, properly addressed "Sir". Also appropriate as an address for any homeowners by their paid staff or slaves.  

In other words, it can be a catch-all for any authority figure!  

So what do we think of Peterson's "Master"? Is it a good catch-all in English?  

Peterson's assumption that Master might be applicable for all three authority levels is actually misleading (Abraham is Master of his household, Jesus is “Master of all” in Philippians 2, and Yahweh, via Adonai, is Master too).  

Let's take God first of all. Would anyone in any faith tradition we know of refer to a deity they reverence as "Master"? For me, this title Master does not work well here. I have already discussed how Adonai functions alongside Yahweh as a reference to the Divine Name in How does the Adonai cookie crumble into Greek Yoghurt?, and how when combined in Hebrew we are well within our rights in English to render these to a single “GOD”, see Obstacle 3. 

Why doesn't Master work here? Because Master is first and foremost the expression of a personal functional relationship between Master and Servant without a religious root. 

So what about the various levels of human authority in the Bible? Should Abraham's "Master-ship" be homogenised with that of Jesus? 

Actually, that is the misleading question. Can you see why? It assumes a static, flat representation of the level of authority intended by the biblical writer. Remember, the Biblical writer is drawing on the context to draw out the important nuances of the authority, not the word Kyrios itself. So this means that the authority level of Jesus can be intentionally upgraded even while maintaining the same title of Kyrios.  

But can we do that in English? I don't think we can: our politically and culturally sensitive vocabulary is rich and revised constantly to empower lower-level roles and avoid issues such as gender discrimination in the workplace. So translation into this complex world of English authority systems is far from straight forward - this should already be evident from the treatment of the first four Obstacles and Let's (at last) translate Yahweh and Kyrios into modern English!. Thus we need to proceed with Jesus with this same due care.  

The gospel writer Mark is the first New Testament writer to which we have access who is describing Jesus prior to his exaltation. He does not hide from his readers that Jesus was speaking in Aramaic and was know to his followers in their mother tongue as "Rabbi", a title still in practice among Jews today. Mark spreads these references across Peter (Mark 9:5 & 11:21), a blind man (Mark 10:51) and Judas Iscariot (Mark 14:45).  

Here is the surprising bit. Prior to Jesus' exaltation in the extended (and inauthentic) ending in Mark, Kyrios is not often applied to Jesus! As a result, we can go through them applying my more dynamic approach as a proposed methodology to measured gospel translation of the pre-exaltated Kyrios Jesus. 

(1:3 is a Yahweh reference and a direct citation from the Septuagint, and thus can be rendered GOD)   

2:28 Lord of the Sabbath is Jesus, but in a grand quasi-cosmic sense. King would suffice here although I prefer a more descriptive “the Son of Man is in charge of the Sabbath”.  

5:19 is Jesus, deliverer of the man with a legion of demons: the Great Rescuer, or the Master could maybe work here. But how does that work? A man cannot be expected to be making sense to refer to "the" Master when retelling the story to his fellow villagers, can he? Unless it is to be made into some exalted interpretation of Kyrios (which could be one shade of meaning here), then a more personal note is needed and feels more natural in this story, namely your Master: "...tell them how much your Master has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."

7:28 is Jesus, a "Sir" address is sufficient. 

11:3 the authority needing the colt, is Jesus, but note he is unnamed for the colt-owner(s) thus probably a reference to an authority level higher than Household owner and not possible in the "Sir" address form. There is certainly nothing to suggest that those encountered by the colt were Jewish or would recognise a Jewish authority term.  

There would seem to be 2 choices:  

1. A local active authority to whom any inhabitant of Jerusalem would defer. 
2. A title tolerated and respected by locals even if they are not directly under its jurisdiction. 
Of course, historically, it is not straight forward to determine precisely what happened during Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on the back of the colt, and in particular how widespread his popularity was given the events ahead, but Mark is clearly portraying it as a triumphant entrance fit for a highly esteemed dignitary, one even commissioned by God for the establishment of his kingdom. A Jewish king. 

Either way, the owners accept the title. For 1. a local authority should be recognisable via the title used, e.g. the Ruler or the Commander or the Commanding Officer might more adequately reflect the Kyrios here than Master. But this then creates unnecessary tension with the ensuing scene, the very purpose of the colt story. In which case we should prefer a version of 2 that would likely be respected without being overly specific. I would opt for "His Excellency" or "His Royal Highness": given the forthcoming exposition of Psalm 110 in chapter 12, consistency would be best maintained via the latter. 

(11:9, 12:11, 12:29 and 12:30 are all Yahweh references, and thus can be rendered GOD - by the way, on the Shema of 12:29, my proposal would be to follow the growing awareness of the uniqueness of Yahweh summarised in this great Jewish declaration and translate simply as follows:  
‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: “Listen up, Israel: GOD is our god, Him alone”). 

12:36 The LORD said to my Lord. Obviously there is no space in my Lord retirement program for either of these titles as English Lords, and we have already settled on GOD for Yahweh. But how do we settle this tricky puzzle for the second lord? 

First, why is it tricky? It is tricky because someone at some point misread this Psalm. Whether it was Mark or Jesus himself is not obvious, but someone somewhere unfortunately flattened the two speakers (the prophet addressing the King and Yahweh) into a single speaker and it stuck for all three synoptic gospels, which creates some awkwardness for me as a follower of Jesus. Mark has Jesus claiming that David is the speaker throughout about someone else who is superior to him! 

That is not at all how Psalm 110 reads. 

But let's accept the situation as best we can by allowing for some "prosopological exegesis" and continue the solutions imagined for the viewing of the colt and in line with this royal Psalm: Your Royal Highness. Not only does this term clearly infer the royal lineage, it fits Mark's usage well and, critically, it remains widely understood today. A fourth advantage to "your Royal Highness" is that the Highness is an open invitation that prepares the reader for the super exaltation to come from other New Testament writers. These compositors will flesh out the Highness in directions that take Jesus into supreme levels of authority, fully occupying both the divine and terrestrial spheres. 

12:37 following on from the exposition of verse 36 above, we could now accept David himself calls him "your Highness". 

13:20 and if [the] Kyrios had not cut those days short... Here although we are not in the context of a Markan Septuagint citation, the pericope, the fact that Kyrios is anarthrous and the New Testament understanding that only the father knows the hour all point in a common direction: this Kyrios is Yahweh, much like in 2 Corinthians 3:16-18. 

16:19 and 16:20 both lie in the longer ending referenced above and whose translation interest me less for now. 

So there we have it! In the whole of Mark, Kyrios seems to be applied directly to Jesus as few as 5 times and is not astonishingly is not yet established as "the Lord Jesus" (only in 16:19 that we can discount as original). For that reason alone, that is to say an unestablished and infrequent type of lordship, has required us to reflect that aspect and tread with contextual care suggesting: 

• The Son of Man is in charge of the Sabbath 
• Tell them how much your Master has done for you 
• Sir, she replied, even the dogs.... 
• His Royal Highness needs it (the colt) 
• GOD said to Your Highness... 


Hopefully, these translations can mirror the crescendoing layers of meaning we see unfolding in the Koine New Testament.  

In subsequent gospels, Kyrios would be used more extensively. This seems to be in connection with the call to "make disciples", and Peterson's "Master" proposal increases its appeal for those actively engaged in exemplary discipleship.

In our next post, however, we can unpack the super-exalted status of the resurrected Christ as developed in some of the epistles, and explore how that might best be translated in modern English. 

Thank you for your interest! It has been a while since I received any feedback or comments. If you can, please do so - it has the effect both of challenging my thinking on these difficult issues and encouraging me that this work is worthwhile.