Every Language: Listening To The Multilingual GodНамуна

Crucify

What do you envision when you hear the word "crucify"? Depending on your religious tradition, one of your first images might be the way crosses are displayed in your church. Catholics might picture the suffering Jesus; Protestants might immediately imagine the empty cross. More detailed images will emerge as you start to think more deeply about what the crucifixion actually was and what it meant for Jesus and, ultimately, for every one of us.

But what if there were no existing word for "cross"—let alone "crucifixion"—in your language? Some languages have used terms like "stretch" or "hammer on a crossbeam" for crucifixion, but translators of other languages sensed it was more prudent and intelligible to describe the process of crucifixion in greater detail every time "crucify" is mentioned. Translators into Apali (a language spoken in Papua New Guinea) translated crucify with the following phrase: "nail to a tree piece put cross-wise, lift up to stand upright (for the crucified person) to die (and in some contexts: to die and rise again)."

What image do you think an Apali Christian sees when he reads or hears I Corinthians 2:2? Try re-reading the verse yourself with the Apali description: "I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was nailed to a tree piece put cross-wise, lifted up to stand upright to die and rise again."

It's a mouthful. But it conjures a graphic picture that we may tend to sanitize with the single word "crucifixion." How can you join the 1,000 people on the northern shore of Papua New Guinea as you remember Jesus' crucifixion in ways that do it justice today?