Chapter 9: What Translation Saves

This chapter is part of the book The Sacred Editors: Lost Texts.

"To translate is to preserve. But also, to change."

In 1945, a clay jar buried near Nag Hammadi in Egypt yielded one of the greatest finds in biblical archaeology: thirteen codices containing over fifty ancient texts—the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Secret Book of John, and more.

None of them were in Greek, the original language of early Christian writings. They were all in Coptic, the Egyptian Christian dialect. Scholars believe these were translations, made sometime in the 3rd or 4th centuries CE, from earlier Greek originals that are now lost. In many cases, the Coptic versions are all that remains.¹

The words of Jesus in these gospels—enigmatic, mystical, often cryptic—come to us filtered through language, culture, and theology. Something was preserved. But something was also transformed. The translators saved the text. But they also remade it.

When Buddhism traveled from India to China, it did so largely through the work of translators—monks like Kumārajīva, who rendered Sanskrit sutras into classical Chinese with elegant precision during the early 5th century CE. But the act of translation was not mechanical.

Buddhist terms like duḥkha (suffering), śūnyatā (emptiness), or nirvāṇa had no perfect Chinese equivalents. So new phrases were coined. Concepts were reframed. Some Mahāyāna texts emphasized universal salvation in a way that resonated with Confucian filial piety. Others took on Daoist overtones, particularly in discussions of wu wei (non-action) and the ineffable nature of ultimate reality.²

Victor Mair's research on Silk Road translations reveals how Buddhist concepts were deliberately adapted to Chinese philosophical frameworks. The result was a new form of Buddhism—faithful to its source, but unmistakably local. Without these translations, Buddhism might not have spread across East Asia. But because of them, Indian Buddhism—as it existed in its original context—effectively vanished from its homeland.

In 1522, Martin Luther published his German translation of the New Testament. It was revolutionary—not only for putting the Bible into the hands of laypeople, but for the interpretive choices he made. He rendered Paul's "justified by faith" in Romans 3:28 as "justified by faith alone" (allein durch den Glauben), adding a word not present in the Greek.³

Luther claimed he was clarifying, not altering. But that one word crystallized the Protestant emphasis on sola fide (faith alone) as a theological dividing line. Translation became not just preservation, but proclamation. From Luther onward, translators of sacred texts were not merely scribes. They were theologians, cultural mediators, and, sometimes, reformers.

This pattern of translation as theological interpretation extends far beyond Christianity. When Sanskrit Hindu texts were rendered into Tamil during the medieval bhakti movement, they acquired new emotional registers and devotional emphases that shaped South Indian religious practice. Aztec and Nahua religious concepts, when forced into Spanish during colonial evangelization, underwent profound transformations that still affect Mexican Catholic practice today.

The Coptic language was once the liturgical and communal tongue of Egyptian Christians. But over centuries of Arabization, Coptic declined. By the 11th century, many Copts could no longer understand their own prayers. So priests began to add Arabic glosses. Then parallel texts. Eventually, full Arabic translations of scripture and liturgy were produced.⁴

The result: the Coptic tradition survived—barely. But in the process, many nuances of theology, grammar, and cultural worldview were lost. Peter Brown's work on late antique Christianity shows how this language shift affected not just liturgy but theological imagination itself. Today, efforts to revive Coptic as a liturgical language exist, but the living memory has thinned.

This story is echoed in the Syriac-Arabic transition among Middle Eastern Christians, the Sanskrit-to-Tamil moves in southern India, and the Latin-to-vernacular shifts in the Catholic Church after Vatican II. Languages change. Memory shifts with them. Jan Assmann's research on cultural memory demonstrates how translation can both preserve and transform the foundational narratives that shape religious communities.⁵

The tension between preservation and transformation becomes especially acute when considering sacred texts that exist only in translation. Gnostic (referring to early Christian movements emphasizing secret knowledge) writings like those found at Nag Hammadi present scholars with unique challenges. Terms that may have carried specific theological weight in Greek—such as gnosis (knowledge) or pneuma (spirit)—acquire different connotations when rendered into Coptic, with its own grammatical structures and cultural assumptions.

Today, translation is faster than ever. Machine translation systems, from Google Translate to AI-driven models, offer near-instantaneous rendering of sacred texts across dozens of languages. But this speed carries new risks. Context is stripped away: ritual, historical, and cultural nuance often evaporate. Communal interpretation is bypassed: translation becomes private, algorithmic, and decontextualized. Authority becomes unclear: who decides the "right" version when every tool gives a different answer?⁶

Digital tools are incredible aids. But without community framing, they can flatten the sacred into the generic. One digital archivist recently described an AI translation of the Bhagavad Gītā as "grammatically perfect—and spiritually hollow."

If the original Greek versions of the Nag Hammadi texts had survived, we might have a fuller sense of early Christian theological range—and perhaps more mainstream legitimacy for gnostic traditions that were marginalized partly through the vagaries of textual transmission. Had Sanskrit and Pali remained dominant across Asia, global Buddhism today might draw more from Indian epistemology. Instead, East Asian Buddhism shaped modern representations, thanks largely to Chinese translations that emphasized different aspects of Buddhist thought.

If oral traditions had been recorded in native tongues before translation into dominant colonial languages, many communities would have retained stronger ritual intimacy with their sacred texts. The loss of indigenous theological vocabulary often accompanies the loss of indigenous religious concepts that cannot be adequately expressed in colonizing languages.

Contemporary scholars emphasize the creative aspects of translation while acknowledging its limitations. Jan Nattier observes that "every translation is an interpretation. We preserve meaning, yes—but we also impose new frames. The translator is always a silent author." Her work on Buddhist textual transmission reveals how translation decisions shaped the development of Buddhist doctrine across cultures.⁷

Lamin Sanneh argues that "translation was the seed of Christianity's growth—and also its inculturation. The Bible in local languages helped communities reshape faith in their own image. That's both gift and risk." His research shows how translation can serve both missionary expansion and indigenous adaptation.⁸

Chloe Starr contends that "Chinese Christian theology is not a distortion of Western theology. It's the product of centuries of linguistic and conceptual negotiation. Translation is not dilution—it's adaptation." Her work demonstrates how translation creates new theological possibilities rather than simply transmitting existing ones.⁹

Translation is how scriptures survive exile, migration, and empire. It's why sacred texts can speak across millennia and borders. But translation also reshapes what we believe. It decides which metaphors resonate, which gendered assumptions linger, which ideas become central—and which are lost in lexical compromise.

In preserving texts through translation, we often let the originals die. But sometimes, something unexpected is born in their place. The Buddhism of East Asia, the Christianity of Africa, the Islam of Southeast Asia—all bear the creative marks of translation. These are not corrupted versions of "pure" traditions but living demonstrations of how sacred texts adapt to new linguistic and cultural environments.

Sacred memory, like language itself, never stands still. Understanding this process can deepen rather than threaten faith by revealing how communities have always actively participated in the transmission and interpretation of their most precious texts.

Notes

The Nag Hammadi discovery is documented in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 4th rev. ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1996); for translation issues, see Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), 13-32.
Victor H. Mair, "Buddhism and the Rise of the Written Vernacular in East Asia: The Making of National Languages," Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 3 (1994): 707-751.
Martin Luther, Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen (Open Letter on Translating), 1530, trans. Gary Mann in Luther's Works, vol. 35 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1960), 181-202.
For Coptic-Arabic transitions, see Mark N. Swanson, The Coptic Papacy in Islamic Egypt, 641-1517 (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2010), 89-112.
Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 15-43.
For digital translation challenges, see Lynne Long, ed., Translation and Religion: Holy Untranslatable? (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2005), 156-178.
Jan Nattier, "The Meanings of the Maitreya Myth," Buddhist Studies Review 15, no. 1 (1998): 45-68.
Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), 1-28.
Chloe Starr, Chinese Theology: Text and Context (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 34-67.

Chapter 9: What Translation Saves - and Loses

Notes

Further Reading