Translating “prophet”

(simultaneously posted under Academic Works)

Prophet derives from Greek pro “before” plus phanai “to speak”, identifying the office of someone who was a spokesperson for the gods.  (Thanks Free Online Etymological Dictionary! You’re a dear, dear friend.)

Since the office was often associated with foretelling future events, and we English speakers are a practical folk, we concentrated on the result – predictions – rather than the mechanism – communication with some sacred Other.  So the connotation of the word “prophet” in popular English emphasizes foretelling the future as prophecy.

Only students of the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) use the word as a technical term for “people selected by The One God to convey a message to a community.”  And of course, the message in question is that same message: worship God only and gladly obey his commands to be fair to Him, others, and yourself.

In Chinese, the translated term for prophet 先知 xianzhi gives preference to the popular meaning rather than the technical meaning.  The first half of the word means “first” or “before” and the second half means “know” giving this word the meaning of “a precognizant”  This translation makes the connotation of foreknowledge to completely replace the literal meaning of spokesperson.

Apparently, translation is like a great linguistic game of telephone, with the meaning of a term being changed gradually through context and use among speakers of one language, and then more dramatically once the concept attempts to leap to another language.

In Islamic studies, the terms 使者 shizhe “messenger” (for the Arabic “rasool”) and  圣人 shengren “sage” have also been used.

The word we’re translating as “prophet” from the Bible and Quran is the Hebrew word nevi, nabi in Arabic.  Nevi may derive from “to speak enthusiastically”, but in any case has been established in Biblical tradition as having the meaning of “interpreter or spokesperson for God”.  (Thanks NA).

We should attempt to distinguish between the two meanings of “prophet” in English by leaving the Greek word for Greek traditions and adopting nevi/nabi as the unambiguous technical term for prophets in the Abrahamic traditions. I would also recommend to Chinese scholars that we abandon the troubled term xianzhi in Biblical and Islamic studies and replace it by coining a new term like 传令 chuanling “commandment conveyor”.

必也正名乎

“We need to straighten out these words, yo.”

– Confucius

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Copyright © 2011 Brendan Newlon

 

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