After preaching and presenting at three different churches in north Germany this past weekend, on Sunday afternoon I took the train back to Kaiserslautern. Looking up from my Persian books and flashcards on the table in front of me, I noticed that the young man sitting across was reading a German book, occasionally looking up terms in a German-English dictionary. Aha, a linguist! I commented that we were apparently both engaged in language studies. He replied, “Indeed!” He told me that he is Lithuanian but also speaks Russian, German, English—and is learning Latin too. Introducing himself as Ilya, he asked why I am studying Persian and I told him. He said that he is looking forward to reading the Vulgate—Jerome’s 5th-century translation of the Bible into Latin. I remarked that Jerome had done a brilliant job with his translation but added that Ilya should beware of a critical error that Jerome had made. “Really! What was that?” I explained that Jerome gravely erred when translating Genesis 3:15. The latter part of the verse *should* read, “He shall crush your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Here God the Father is speaking to the serpent, prophesying that as punishment for the serpent’s deceiving Adam and Eve, “he” (the future Messiah) would “crush” the serpent by defeating Satan on the cross and the empty tomb. This is a prophecy of our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection. But unfortunately, Jerome mistranslated “he” as “she. This would open the door to a heretical new interpretation of who the Messiah would be, namely supposedly Mary. Over time, this caused the Church to veer away from its hitherto Christocentric focus. All because of a mistranslation! Apparently familiar with the basics of Christianity, Ilya immediately grasped the theological significance of Jerome’s error. “Do you have a faith tradition, Ilya?” I asked. He replied, “No. I know a fair amount about Christianity, and like what I hear, but I don’t want to get too close to it because then I would have to change certain things in my life.” He let this statement hang in the air… To be continued…
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