A No Win Scenario - Acts 2:11 (Monday with Mounce 128)

There are some times in which there simply is no good way to translate a verse. No matter how hard you try, there will always be some ambiguity.

I am reading through the NIV looking for what I call “NIVisms,” phrases that stand out as a little unusual. Every translation has them. I suspect that sometimes these NIVisms are the result of hours of debate, and there simply was no easy solution.

In the story of Pentecost, when the plethora (I love that word) of people heard the disciples speaking in tongues as evidence of the newly bestowed Holy Spirit, they were bewildered because “each one heard their own language being spoken” (2:6). Here is an example of our decision to use “their” as an indefinite, referring back to one or more than one. I think this works fine here, even though you have the singular “one,” then “their,” and then the singular “language.”

But when you get to v 11, it gets stranger. The NIV reads, “we hear (ἀκούομεν) them (αὐτῶν) declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues (ταῖς ἡμετέραις γλώσσαις)!” The reason this sounds unusual to me is a confusion of number, but the confusion is in the Greek.

I am curious. What do you hear by “our own”? I hear one person claiming to hear the gospel in “his own (singular) tongues (plural),” Except for people who are motherly bilingual — one of the greatest gifts to give to a child — there is no such thing as my (singular) own tongues (plural). But certainly this is not what Luke is saying.

Certainly this is the voice of the crowd (plural). Each person has his or her own native tongue, and each are stating in bewilderment that each one of the disciples was speaking in a language native to someone in the crowd. And so we understand “them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues” to mean that each one of the disciples was declaring the wonders of God in a language native to someone in the crowd.

Kind of torturous to say it clearly, which is why the NIV I assume left it as they did. Or perhaps the committee didn’t hear it the way I do.

William D. [Bill] Mounce posts about the Greek language, exegesis, and related topics at  Koinonia. He is the author of numerous books, including the bestselling Basics of Biblical Greek, and is the general editor for Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of the Old and New Testament Words. He served as the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version Bible translation, and is currently on the Committee for Bible Translation for the NIV. Learn more and visit Bill's other blog on spiritual growth, Life is a Journey, at www.billmounce.com

Comments

[David A Booth]

I think the NIV gets this as well as it can, but I hear it somewhat differently than you do.

When I hear "our own tongues" I hear "each of us is hearing in his or her respective language and these languages are diverse".

Virtually all the major English translations follow the same approach as the NIV (although some substitute 'languages' for 'tongues'). The New Jerusalem Bible's "in our own language" might sound better to your ear, but would make it seem like their was only one receptor language.

The only way that I can see to get around this is to by being more paraphrastic and saying: "each in his or her own language", yet this really doesn't seem any better than the NIV's "our own tongues".

[Dave Sugg]

What I find most interesting in this passage is that it seems the emphasis is on each person hearing his own language, not on one of the disciples speaking each language. Given that this event is probably a preview of the eschatalogical reversal of the Babel curse, I think it is more likely the hearing that is in view, not the speaking. However, all the discussion about tongues is on "speaking in tongues" not hearing in tongues. Interesting.

[Norman Andresen]

I really do not see the problem your present. I agree interspersing singular and plurals in one thought, phrase or sentence makes translation problematic as one wants agreement in tense, voice and everything else that exhibits good grammar. I may be too accustomed to reading and hearing this passage but it appears to me that someone knew several languages and was talking to the person next to them. The example I can give is my father was fluent in German and English but I am only fluent in English. In the situation where he and I together heard people speaking, with me hearing English and my father hearing German. Could I not say to him we hear them speaking in our own tongues (languages)?

[Scott G]

Why do you think "our own" is only singular? I'm just a laymen, and I never would have seen the confusion of number. I would have thought "our" is plural. Do you think "own" is the confuser? My wife and I talked this over and really could not see the problem, which is not to say it isn't there, just that perhaps many of us speak and read with a lack of precision.