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More Words Hard to Translate

John of Japan

Well-Known Member
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That may be correct. I have not checked that. On the other hand, I did check δοξα and found both the KJV and NASB translates it with a few other words, though predominantly "glory". Other words include dignity, glorious, honour, praise, worship (KJV), and approval, brightness, glorious, honor, majesties (NASB).
Thanks. I shouldn't have assumed it was always "glory."
 

John of Japan

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Looks like Revelation 3:9 might be one exception, according to how one interprets the verse.
The KJV often translates προσκυνέω as "worship" and often as "bow" or "bow down" (but I don't have numbers on this observation.) I'd say this should have been "bow down" in this verse. In many cultures, especially Asian, simply to bow is not worship but respect.
 

RighteousnessTemperance&

Well-Known Member
Thanks for calling attention to this. I had an interesting look at the English word "worship." I doubt that the KJV translators or those English translators before them thought it is okay to worship a human, but rather used it in its range of meaning of "condition of being worthy" or "extravagant admiration." What I found interesting, though, when looking at the word, is that Etymology.com said that the sense of reverence paid to a supernatural or divine being (for the word worship) is first recorded circa 1300. (Would love to see what the OED has on that.) Wycliffe used worschipe in that latter sense, but, in the other way in Luke 14:10. As best I could tell, the Anglo-Saxon Gospels consistently used a completely different word for reverence to God (gebiddon, gebiddað, etc.). On the other hand, they did use a word related to weorðscipe (worthy condition) -- wurðmynt -- in Luke 14:10. All this to say that the idea of worship as "condition of being worthy" likely still inhabited the minds of the 16th and 17th century English much more so than it does 20th and 21st century Americans, who might never think of it. The 1885 ERV changed the word to "glory" and most later Bibles followed.
And then there are the addresses Your/His/Her Worship and The (Right) Worshipful.
 

Jerome

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Site Supporter
The Gospel Coalition ❧  Etymology of ‘Worship’

"Our first difficulty is that ‘worship’ is an English word translating Hebrew and Greek expressions. Moreover, in discussions of the subject it is generally overlooked that the English word has itself undergone radical development. Since it was first used in translation, ‘worship’ has acquired a semantic range quite different from its own original meaning. That this is so can be seen in some surviving English archaisms. Judges are still called ‘Your worship’ and we still have a few ‘worshipful companies’, yet the term has no religious significance in these contexts. Again, the statement in the marriage service of 1549, ‘With my body I thee wurship’...seems very peculiar now."

"The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary states that until the early seventeenth century ‘worship’ was commonly used to denote ‘respect or honour shown to a person or thing’. It quotes Jonathan Swift’s acid comment that a certain woman was ‘as fine as Fi’pence; but truly, I thought, there was more Cost than Worship’. However, by the early eighteenth century the term was being used more exclusively to refer to religious ceremonies and by the middle of that century its use in a secular context was evidently becoming rare. Today, of course, ‘worship’ is not merely an almost exclusively religious term but has acquired additional connotations"
 
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