In the New Testament there is a term which has been largely overlooked by biblical scholars and ordinary readers as well. That term is the Spirit. A number of times in the original Greek the definite article is used with the word Spirit. Sometimes the is translated literally, but other times it is blurred over. In the Chinese version 2 Corinthians 3:17, for example, is correctly rendered, “Now the Lord is the Spirit.” However, quite often instead of translating the Spirit literally, the word Holy is added, along with three dots to indicate that the word was not in the original. This was done with Romans 8:16, for example; “The Spirit Himself” is rendered “Holy Spirit” in the Chinese.
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This same verse has another inaccurately rendered word in the Chinese version. Rather than saying “with our spirit,” as it is in Greek, the rendering is “with our heart.” The scholars who did the Chinese translations were well versed in Greek and Hebrew. There were seven translators, most of them British and American, assisted by well qualified Chinese scholars. Generally speaking, the translation is an excellent one. The literary style and the sentence structure leave little to be desired. What the translators lacked, however, was an accurate knowledge of spiritual things. It would be a serious error, physiologically speaking, if we used heart when we were referring to the lungs. In referring to our psychological makeup, it is no less important to differentiate between our spirit and our heart.
This distinction between spirit and heart is clear in the Old Testament. Ezekiel 36:26 says, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.” Heart and spirit are clearly two different entities. We should not use the two terms interchangeably.
In John 4:24 the Chinese translation again shows the lack of spiritual understanding on the part of the translators. Instead of going along with the Greek and saying that God is to be worshipped in spirit, the Chinese version has heart-spirit. The Greek word for spirit is pneuma; for heart, it is cardia. We need to maintain the scriptural distinction in their usage.
Over thirty years ago, one day in Shanghai I sat down with Brother Nee and asked, “Brother Nee, what is heart-spirit?” He replied, “Heart-spirit! There is no such thing, anymore than there can be a heart-lung. Heart is heart, spirit is spirit, and lung is lung. These are all separate organs. They cannot be mixed up.”
Please be assured that the New Testament books we have translated are not an effort to alter the meaning of the original. Our object is to make the translation as accurate as possible. It takes a great deal of research and consideration to select the right words. We have in hand over forty different English translations of the Bible. Before we decide how to translate a certain word, we check the different ways it has been translated already. Many differing opinions are revealed by the various translations! We also have numerous reference books, such as lexicons, concordances, and word studies, that help us arrive at our translation. We further study the usage of the word in question. How was the word used in ancient times? What is its modern usage? How is it used elsewhere in the New Testament? To all these considerations we add our understanding of spiritual matters. Then we make our decision as to how the word will be translated.
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