Abstract: From
the Quran and Arabic Language - and all the results apply to Hebraic and
Aramaic as well - this paper discusses the real sense of some passages of the Gospel,
specially the parable of the Good Samaritan and the episode of Zacchaeus,
showing how Exegesis depends on the Semitic distinction between three different
“ifs” (certainty, impossibility and doubt) while our Western Languages confound
them in only one “if”.
Confounding
Thinking
Distinguishing and confounding, according to
Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, are two major functions of thinking
and language, or of the "language / thinking system", as the
outstanding philosopher of language, Johannes Lohmann1, suggests (since
language and thinking should be considered not as independent elements, but in mutual
interaction).
As Julian Marias says, if the only function of
thinking were to distinguish and direct the mind to different forms of reality,
we wouldn’t know how to deal with complex realities in their connections and there
are cases in which we are interested exactly in “the common” rather than in the
differences2. If a bug (“bicho”
in the original) lands on my shoulder, I am not interested in determinating its
precise species among the hundred thousands distinguished by biologists: if it
is the coleopterus so or so… it does not matter to me: it is just a bug, an
importunous bug and all that I say is: “Shoo, bug, shoo, away”.
Actually, in certain situations we need
distinguishing; in others, counfounding. Yes, it is certain that every language
is, in some measure, confounding; after all, language itself, being abstract,
is confounding. But there are levels in that tendency. As we have shown in
other articles, roughly speaking, Eastern Languages tend relatively to be more
confounding than the Western ones (and it goes without saying that when we say
“confounding” we mean no judgment of value).
Lets consider for example the Arabic word Salam (or its Hebraic equivalent: Shalom), usually translated by “peace.” Or better yet, for the Semitic
semantics - in which consonants are what really count -, consider the
tri-consonantal root S-L-M (/ Sh- L-M). “Peace” is only one of the many
meanings confounded in S-L-M, that also expresses: unity, (moral or physical)
integrity, health, salvation etc.
Confounding
Thinking and Biblical Exegesis
This cumulative, confounding character of
Semitic Languages is very important to Biblical Exegesis. Outside this context,
how to understand, for example, the enigmatic sentence of the apostle Paul who
writes in Greek (but still thinks in his Hebraic mother tongue) “Christ is our Peace...”?
When we look in detail to the meaning of
“peace,” we find new and unexpected aspects in it.
A new
meaning shows up when – following a trend of the contemporary exegesis – we
turn ourselves to the thoughts and to the Semitic word behind the Greek word
used by Paul. This task becomes even more necessary when we read the reason why
Christ is called our peace: He “has made the two one and has destroyed the
barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph.
As we said, Semitic
Languages are frequently “confounding”: the same word – or root – accumulates
in itself different meanings that, from our Western perspective, require
different words. Shalom is meant here
not exactly as peace, but in its sense of unity, integrity. And in this sense,
for a Jew it is totally natural that Christ is our Shalom, since He has
reestablished the unity, “has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier”
(Eph.
Distinguishing
Thinking – variety of semitic “ifs” vs. our single “if”
In this study we will not examine
the usual confounding aspect of the Semitic languages, but an exceptional case
that goes in the opposite way: we will turn our attention to a special case in
which Semitic Languages (we will be centered in Arabic Language but all the
results apply to Hebraic and Aramaic as well) distinguish, while our language
confounds: that is the case of the conjunction “if” and how western “confusion”
can disturb the understanding of Jesus’s sayings (as a native Aramaic speaker).
Semitic Languages have distinct
conjunctions distinguishing three levels of possibilities while we have only
one: the conjunction “if”3, that confoundingly admits three different
possibilities:
1. The so to speak “first if” (Arabic
idha) expresses a certainty (or very
high probability) that something will happen: “If it rains in
3. And there is an “if” of real
doubt (maybe, maybe not), as when the pregnant woman says: “We don't know if it is a boy
or a girl yet” or when the invite guest says in his mobile phone: “Traffic is a
little slow: I don’t know if I can arrive at eight.”
Naturally, sometimes it is plain to
see that we are dealing with the unreal, utopic“if”, like in the Peggy March’s
song: “If I were a princess I'd pass the greatest law in history and it would
make you fall in love with me”.
But in other cases things are not
that clear. In my childhood, Kypling’s poem “If” was proposed to our generation as a concrete ideal, unreached
but not unreachable, very exigent but not impossible:
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt
you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too
wise;
(…)
If you can talk with crowds and keep your
virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common
touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt
you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in
it,
And -which is more- you'll be a Man, my son!
The confounding character of “if”
(covering the broad semantic field from the impossible to the certainty)
allowed the parody Kipling Revisitado
by José Paulo Paes:
“Kipling revisited”4
if etc
if etc
if etc
if etc
if etc
if etc
if etc
you´ll be a
theorem, my son!
Our “if” is one word for these three
such different semantic situations. Imagine our language having three (or more)
different words for the three levels: impossibility, certainty and doubt. In
this case, how would the translation of a Semitic speech be affected (and after
all the Gospel is a Semitic speech)?
In the following, we will analyse
some uses of the Arabic “ifs” (Hebraic / Aramaic), and the most important is
the consequences of the translation gap: from three different “ifs” into only
one: our confounding “if”.
The
Arabic (Semitic) particle “law”: the “if”
of impossibility
Let’s begin with the “if” of
impossibility (or almost impossibility, merely hypothetical, emphatic,
desiderative, utopical etc.). It is the “if” of – as grammarians say – the
“contrafactual constructions”: “If you had been on time, we could have caught
that bus”. And in the Quran we read:
“Say,
‘If all the sea were ink for my Lord's Words, the sea would indeed be exhausted
before my Lord's Words are exhausted! And thus it would be if We were to add to
it sea upon sea.’" (18, 109)
If
we had an equivalent in English (and notice that the “if” of the beginning of
this paragraph is the “if – law”) to
this “if – law”, it would be very
useful in avoiding embarassing situations, being the introduction of
communicating bad news like: a serious disease, wedding cheating etc.
An interesting use of the “if - law” is in the form “wa law” which expresses an “even if” of
impossibility. Besides the Quran, Islamic tradition has the hadith, the sayings of the Prophet. A
famous hadith says:
“Seek
knowledge
even if you have to go to
And in Arabic proverbs5, we
found:
Khara (crap) is khara even if it crosses the
Give
your dough to a baker even if (wa law)
he may eat half of it (Freyha # 243). The meaning is: Calling a professional is
better than any improvisation.
A
dog is a dog even if he wears golden clothes (Jasim # 767)
The Quran uses law 80 times, as when, for example, the damned in Hellfire say: “If
a return were possible for us…” (2, 167). Or “As for those who disbelieve, lo! If
all that is in the earth were theirs, and as much again therewith, to ransom
them from the doom on the Day of Resurrection, it would not be accepted from
them” (5, 36). Or when those who disbelieve say: “O thou (Muhammad) art indeed
a madman... Why bringest thou not angels unto us, if thou art of the truthful?...”
(15, 6-7).
And surely it was the “if-law” of his mother tongue that the
Apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote his famous hymn: “"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
but do not have love...” (I Cor 13, 1).
The
“if-idha”
For the “if –idha” (of certainty), let’s begin with a remark of the Ph.D.
dissertation of Kadi, Hatta Idha in the
Qur’an...6. The meaning of “if - idha” is unanimously considered by the grammarians as a word which contains a conditional sense, but is not
a particle of proper condition (contrary to the Arabic particle “in” or others).
Thus, when you say: “In ta´tini (jussive) atika (jussive)”, “If you visit me I
will visit you”, it is quite possible that you should not visit me and hence I
will not visit you (p. 24). But if one uses idha,
instead of in: “Idha ataytani (indicative) atika
(indicative)”, “When you visit me I will visit you”, there is no question
about the fact that you will visit me and hence me you; it is only a question of
when these actions will take place
(p. 24).
“The actions indicated by the idha are certain to happen, whereas
those indicated by the pure conditional particles are not” (p. 24). Sibawayh
(c. 800), the founding father of Arabic Grammar, contrasts the use of idha with in:
Atika idha ihmarra al-busru
I
will visit you when (/if) the dates become red.
but one cannot say, using pure
conditional particles such as in:
Atika in ihmarra al-busru
I
will visit you if the dates become red.
for these fruits will necessarily
become red in some point in the future7.
Dichy, in a lecture on the Arabic
conditional, points out that idha is
used to indicate something that will come to be in some point of the future
from a situation now in process, as is known by repetition or habit; or in the
formulation of a scientific law:
“If he comes to Mossul, he will visit us (as always
has happened)
Kana, idha 'ata l-mawsila
yazuruna
And in al-Ghazali:
If
every A is B (alif, ba), some B is A8.
Being an “if” of certainty, idha is often translated by “when”, in
the sense of “whenever”. In the Quran we read, for example: “Those who say, when afflicted with calamity: ‘To God We
belong…’” (2, 156); “It is prescribed for you when death approaches any of you…” (2, 180); “...I answer the
prayer of the suppliant when he calls
on Me...” (2,
186).
Idha
and in are used in the famous saying
of Jesus: “If (idha) your brother sins against you, go and show him his
fault, just between the two of you. If (in) he listens
to you…” Mt (18,15). It is certain that some brother will sin
against me; it is doubtful if he will accept the correction...
The Gospel revisited
Needless to say that this short
presentation of the Semitic “if-forms” is far from being complete and aims only
to be a short introduction to the experience of reading the sayings of Jesus
from its Semitic “distinguishing” point of view.
In this sense, it is interesting to
notice that different Arabic editions of the Gospel not always coincide in
using the same “if” (law, idha or the ifs of the family of in) for the same saying. Anyway, it is
important to discuss which kind of “if” Jesus employed in each case, in His
preaching and conversation.
Lets consider some passages of the
Gospel (New American Standard Bible) containing the particle “if” and see how
to translate them in order to recover their original sense: what the Gospel speakers
really meant? Naturally, this is in some measure a kind of Exegesis-Fiction,
since there is no recorded tape with the literal (Aramaic) words of Jesus, the
apostles etc.
Lets begin with the most obvious and
undoubtful:
1.
The “if” of doubt and real possibility – it is the
easiest and most frequent. One example is enough: Mt (28,14), when the chief
priests gave a large sum of money to the soldiers and told them to say that the
disciples of Jesus stole His body etc.: “And if this should come to the
governor's ears, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble”.
2.
The “if-idha” of certainty. In
several verses it seems clear that Jesus (or other speakers) use this “if”:
What
man is there among you who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the
Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out? (Mt 12,11).
If
it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it… (Mt 18,
13)
If
a man's brother dies…, his brother should marry the wife... (Mk 12, 19)
If
a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit (Mt 15, 14)
In all these cases, “if” can be
replaced by “when” without change of meaning: surely, there will always be sheeps
that fall into a pit; sheeps that are found; brothers that die and misguided
blinds.
3. The “if-law”. There
are passages clearly with “if – law”:
If
the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming...
(Mt 24, 43)
False
Christs will arise..., so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect (Mt 24,
24)
In Lk 7, 36 and ff., a pharisee
requests Christ to dine with him and when a sinner woman begins to serve Him
wetting His feet with tears etc. the pharisee thinks: “If this man were a
prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching
Him, that she is a sinner”. Undoubtfully his “if” is a law for he has just been convinced that Jesus is a fraud.
4. Which “if”? It
is not always clear which variety of “if” has been really used in a passage and
it is sometimes an interesting experience to try different Semitic “ifs” in the
same verse:
a)
The “if” of the devil. When Jesus is tempted by the devil (Mt
4,3 e ss.; Lk 4, 3 e ss.): “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to
become bread”, we are accustomed to read this “if” as doubtful (“is He or
not…”) but it can very well be read as an “if” of almost certainty (idha): “Since You are the Son of God…”
or even as an “if – law” of
impossibility…
b)
The “if” of the
c)
“If You can do anything” Mk 9, 14 and ff. An afflicted father challenges
Jesus with the “if” of doubt (or would it be the “if” of impossibility?), “If
You can do anything…”; Jesus reacts (kind of “Hey, what do you mean by that?”) and
challenges the father (“If you believe all things are possible”) who answered
crying: “I do believe; help my unbelief.”
Towards
a new comprehension of the parable of the Good Samaritan and Zacchaeus
The
“if” of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10, 30-37)
But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus,
"And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied and said, "A man was going
down from Jerusalem Jericho
Who is the hero of this parable? For
the usual interpretation, there are no doubts: the hero - the only hero - is
the Samaritan9. He is in the title we gave to the parable; there are
thousands and thousands of hospitals named “Samaritan” or “The Good Samaritan”
all around the world and a search in Google (
And as a matter of fact, the Samaritan
is not the only one who shows mercy… Lets consider first, the Innkeeper, whose
mercy surpasses the mercy of the Good Samaritan, although he is never
celebrated and there is no hospital called “The Good Innkeeper”. The Innkeeper
has received two denarii for hosting the Samaritan and the victim, and for
taking care of the victim until he recovers. The generosity and the heroism of
the Innkeeper becomes obvious when we consider that two denarii is by no means
proportional to his cost: the “if” said by the Samaritan is idha: “surely you’ll spend much more
money”, because two denarii is miserably only about ten dollars! Remember the
parable of laborers: a denarius is paid to an unqualified worker for a work day
(Mt 20, 1 ff.). And every Innkeeper knows he should never accept fragile
promises (“and
whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you”), especially
being an Innkeeper of Judea and a Samaritan promiser! In summary: the Innkeeper
rather than the Samaritan seems to be the hero of this story.
But there is a third candidate to this
“neighbor” concept. Lets begin remembering that Jesus asks: “Which of these
three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the
robbers' hands” Who are “these three”? The implicit answer
of every christian - “Priest, Levite, Samaritan” - is indeed pure nonsense: the
Priest and the Levite cannot be the neighbors of that poor man. Curiously, the
third “candidate” is one of the robbers. In fact, there is a subtle and very
surprising fact in the parable: the victim was left “half dead”. Now, everybody
knows that no band of robbers - no matter in which culture or time – is
expected to leave alive its victim: they just kill their victim to the risk of being
recognized. There is no reason for leaving the victim alive except under the
hypothesis that one of the robbers (like in the story of Joseph, Genesis 37-50)
claims for mercy, “showing mercy toward the victim”, in sparing his life. In that
case, the great hero of the parable would be this “Good Robber”: the Samaritan
sacrifices a little time and money; the Innkeeper sacrifices much more time and
much more money (at least in terms of risk) and the Robber sacrifices his own safety
and life, exposing himself - and all the band members - for future vengeance.
Christ does not say concretely who
is the neighbor nor who are “these three” but, prejudices aside,
Samaritan-Innkeeper-Robber sounds like a better trio than Priest-Levite-Samaritan.
The
“if” of Zacchaeus (Lk 19 1,10)
He entered
If the Innkeeper has been ignored,
Zacchaeus has been misjudged as corrupt officer. Besides the bias against tax
collectors the basis for this grotesque mistake is a misunderstanding of the
“if” of his saying: “If I have defrauded anyone...”.
His “if” has been wrongly interpreted
as an idha (of certainty), when it should
be read as the if-law of
impossibility. Being rich and a chief tax collector, Zacchaeus is suspected of
corruption and when Jesus comes to his home, people say: "He has gone to
be the guest of a man who is a sinner." But, taking the Gospel seriously
it is impossible to label Zacchaeus as corrupt. Lets estimate his fortune as
being for example 600,000: his giving half of it to the poor leaves him with 300,000
and, if he had defrauded anyone (which never happened) his alleged scheme of
corruption never would have surpassed 75,000 (to give back four times to the
defrauded). In other words, Zacchaeus has made at least more than 7/8 (525,000)
of his money honestly...
Yes, exegets usually point out Lk 19, 8 as a first class conditional
sentence, that is
not really a condition at all, but it implies that the condition is actually
true and could well be translated: "since". And it is argued that
Zacchaeus’s sentence should be read this way: “if I have defrauded (and
it really happened) anyone of anything…”. But an exeget like James L. Boyer, having
analysed this one and all the first class conditional verses of the New
Testament categorically concludes:
In summary, what does a first class conditional
sentence in NT Greek mean? It means precisely the same as the simple condition
in English, "If this... then that..." It implies absolutely nothing as to
"relation to reality."10
In other words: The “if” of Zacchaeus
can very well mean: “if I have defrauded (and it never happened) anyone of
anything…”.
Conjectures suggested by the
consideration of the Semitic distinctions in cases in which we – the Western
readers of the Gospel - are bounded to confound.
References
and Notes
Boyer, James L. (1981) “First class
conditions: what do they mean?” Grace
Theological Journal, Grace Theological Seminary,
Dichy, Joseph (2007) Si, comme si, même si, Ah! Si et si non:
conditionnelles et référentiels discursifs en arabe,
http://www.concours-arabe.paris4.sorbonne.fr/cours/Dichy-26-03-2007.pdf ,
access in
Feghali, Michel (1938) Proverbes
et Dictons Syro-Libanais, Paris, Institut d'Ethnologie
Freyha, Anis (1974) A
Dictionnary of Modern Lebanese Proverbs, Beirut, Librairie du Liban
Giolfo, Manuela E. B. (2005) “Le Strutture condizionali
dell’arabo classico” Kervan, Univ. di
Torino, No. 2, luglio 2005.
Kadi, Samar Afif (1994) Hatta Idha in the Qur’an: a linguistic study,
Ph.D. dissertation,
Lohmann, Johannes (1976) "
Mahdi, Jasim Reyadh (2006) El refranero iraquí – aspectos semánticos y socioculturales, tesis
doctoral
Marías, Julian (1999) Entrevista
http://www.hottopos.com/videtur8/entrevista.htm
O’Leary, De Lacy (2000) Comparative Grammar of Semitic Languages,
Routledge.
Paes, J. P (1986) Um
por todos (poesia reunida). São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986
Stec, D. M. (1987) “The Use of
" hen " in Conditional Sentences”, Vetus Testamentum,
End
Notes
1. Lohmann (1976)
2. Marías (1999)
3. For the Arabic, Hebraic and
Aramaic forms of the “if” of impossibility (arabic: law), see: “‘If’ introducing statement known or believed to be
untrue” in O’Leary (2000: p. 276). For the “if” of certainity (Arabic idha, Hebraic hen), cf.: Stec (1987), According to Stec, some scholars consider hen – in the special sense of “if” – an
aramaism in biblical Hebraic.
4. Paes (1986: p. 97)
5. From: Freyha (1974), Feghali (1938)
and Mahdi (2006).
6. Kadi (1994)
7. Cf. tb: Giolfo (2005: p. 58).
8. Dichy (2007: 2.2 b e c)
9. Any way, in the interpretation of
many Fathers of the Church, Christ is the samaritan (Augustine En. in Ps. 124, 15; Caesarius of Arles, Sermones 161, 2; Isidore, Allegoriae quaedam... Ex NT 205 etc.);
and the Innkeeper is Apostle Paul (Augustine, ibidem; Caesarius, ibidem);
or the bishops (Arnobius) etc.
10. Boyer (1981: p. 82)
