It's All Greek To Me

I had an interesting conversation today with a lady who seemed convinced that if she can only know the Greek original of a word in Scripture then understanding what it says is easy.

The context was the story of Jesus' crucifixion, where we had just heard a version read out which spoke of Jesus being crucified between two 'revolutionaries' rather than 'thieves', as in the King James translation, or 'robbers'/'bandits' as used in most modern versions of the story.

So which translation is 'true'?

Well, the original Greek is lestes, which my big book of words tells me means "robber, highwayman, bandit, revolutionary'. Which covers pretty much all of the modern translations. One point being that simple one-to-one translations between languages and cultures hardly ever exist.

Fortunately my book of words also gives context and background - which is why I use it.

Lestes generally refers to one who robs with violence, as opposed to a kleptes, who would typically be a thief who steals by stealth. One complication is that being a lestes doesn't necessarily imply being dishonest or illegal: a soldier was legally entitled to seize plunder whilst performing his duties, in so doing he would be a lestes.

But the big confusion comes from the rabbis of the day calling zealots 'lestes' - the zealots were violent anti-Roman (and by implication anti-collaborator) freedom fighters ... or terrorists.

Crucifixion was a deliberately horrific way of torturing a person to death, used by the Romans as a way of imposing their control over a region. It was used to 'discourage the others' on people who the Romans really didn't want anyone to emulate: especially rebels.

So, 'robbers' would be a simplistically literal rendering of the Greek word used. But at this time and in this context it is much more likely that the word meant 'rebels' or (more clumsily) 'revolutionaries'.

Can I back this up from the Bible itself? Actually, in this case, yes: John 18:40 tells us that Barabbas was a leptes, whilst Mark 15:7 expands on this to tell us that Barabbas was amongst the rebels in prison for murder committed during an insurrection. So here we do indeed have a violent rebel described as a leptes.

Why might this matter? One point is that when it comes to the Bible the question 'is this translation of the passage  true?' is the wrong question: a better question is 'does this translation help me see the truth in this Bible passage?'

Jesus was crucified between two rebels because the authorities of the day saw the things he said and did as rebellion. Even though Jesus had no army and harmed nobody they saw him as a threat against their world order, just as much as armed revolutionaries were.

When Jesus rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sent his Spirit to empower his followers the authorities and powers of the day carried on trying to stamp them out by force ... and carried on failing. It turned out that the power of Jesus, working in peace, was far greater and more long lasting than the violent might of the religious and secular rulers combined.

Today, some groups claiming to follow Jesus have actually turned into those religious and secular authorities, still trying to stamp out followers of the Son Of Man; whilst other groups turn to the ways of Barabbas and the other men of violence, seeking to change the world through force and terror, but just perpetuating hatred and injustice.

Yet Jesus is still here, amongst those at the bottom of the heap. Still changing the world, still setting people free, even on a Good Friday when it all looks really grim.

Is The West Making Syrian Suffering Worse?

The 'Arab Spring' hit Syria in March last year when security forces arrested and tortured a group of teenagers - for painting revolutionary slogans on their school's walls. They opened fire on the resulting protest march, killing four, and again at a funeral for the victims, killing at least one more. As a display of brutal incompetence by the Syrian regime it is hard to see how this could have been beaten.

Before that commentators were generally agreed that Syria was unlikely to be seriously affected by the changes affecting the more southerly autocratic regimes in the region. Although far from democratic, President Bashar Al-Assad was seen as reasonably popular within Syria, had already brought in some mild reform, and represented stability and security in a large country with a varied population. Opposition and protest groups were fragmented and localised; Syrians saw the possibility of breakdown, even civil war, and were thought to be horrified at the risk. The horrible example of neighbouring Iraq made it all too clear what could happen.

The trouble is that all those arguments still stand, except that Assad isn't doing so well at imposing security himself. Syria is currently headed toward anarchy and civil war, and Western intervention is just making chaos more likely. The Independent reports that the death toll to date is thought to be around 10,000, whilst a further 1.5 million are estimated to need 'urgent humanitarian assistance'.

Meanwhile the spotlight of the Western media is on every minor uprising, encouraging revolt to happen and criticising every attempt to prevent rebellion from growing. The publicising of the violence leads to pressure from consumers of the media to 'do something', without any idea what that 'something' is. So now Western leaders are again talking about 'regime change'.

We've been here before, in Iraq. Years of sanctions which hit the poorest, and limited oil-sale schemes which benefited the corrupt, until finally the West got the invasion it wanted and Iraqis got anarchy. At least in Iraq the regime had been genuinely evil: something like a million people had suffered and died under Saddam Hussein, so the half-million plus who died under US rule could, arguably, be said to be vaguely proportionate.

Under Bashar Al-Assad, the only report of significant regime killings I can find was at the 2004 Al-Qamishli riots, where clashes between Arabs and Kurds, combined with police brutality, led to some 30 deaths (some reports set the figure as high as a hundred). Since the Western media focussed on Syria the death toll is well up in the thousands; if full-scale civil war or other form of anarchy breaks out then that will be in the hundreds of thousands, maybe even worse. Brutal suppression of rebellion can be bloody; sometimes the alternative can be worse.

It is notable that the diplomatic games around Syria refuse to involve Iran: if there was a serious interest in peace then Iran and Russia are the two states with a realistic chance of making a difference, but peace and justice are really not the name of the game here. If they were then the focus would be much more on the Arab Gulf states, particularly Bahrain, where a tiny but immensely wealthy regime oppresses the majority of citizens with little more than token complaints from its Western 'friends'.

I'm not saying that Assad is a good leader, nor that Syria is anything other than autocratic and corrupt. But what's happening there now isn't part of an 'Arab Spring' movement toward democracy. It's small localised revolts which are gradually growing towards outright civil war; and civil war is very bad indeed for the people of a country.

So, next time you see a news report of deaths in Syria, before you indulge in self-righteous indignation and claim 'something must be done' ... just take a moment to think that it is likely that your 'something' will just make matters worse. By responding like that you may well be a part of the problem.