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Question 4

Bercot’s Honduras translator illustration shows how “thought-for-thought” translation can quietly reinterpret kingdom theology into an evangelical framework; where do you see your own mind doing the same thing to Jesus’s words—replacing what He said with what your tradition expects Him to mean?

Another way to ask: Where do you catch yourself changing Jesus’s words in your mind to fit what your church tradition already expects them to mean?

Direct Answer The transcript suggests we do this when we instinctively “translate” Jesus’s and the apostles’ words into our pre-set theological framework, assuming we already know what they mean instead of letting their actual wording confront us.

Support from Transcript:

He quotes Bill Mounts: translating is “both a science and an art,” meaning it includes subjective judgment.
He says a translator’s “theology and worldview and prior influences” supply much of that subjectivity.
In Honduras, Luis gives thought-for-thought translations that are fine generally, but on theology he “reinterprets what I’m saying into his evangelical thought pattern.”
The result: listeners hear something “a bit different” than Bercot intended from a “kingdom theological perspective.”
He applies this to Bible translation: he doesn’t want translators “second-guessing what Jesus and His apostles intended to say.”
He adds that even people who know Greek “automatically read their theological assumptions into the Scriptures…It’s unavoidable.”

Discussion Follow-ups When a saying of Jesus feels unfamiliar or demanding, do you reflexively soften it with your tradition’s categories? What would it look like to slow down and ask, “What are the actual words saying before my system explains them?”

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