Most people arrive at Bible College dreading the prospect of  Greek and Hebrew - nerdy as I am, I relished it. Not because I expected to have original insights on any given text but because I could have insight based on any given the original text. In general, to be perfectly honest, our translations do a fantastic job of conveying just what the original is trying to say because English is a wonderfully diverse and expressive language. Sometimes, however, English fails us and something exciting happens in Greek that is totally unseen in our English translations.

In Bible study we are working our way through Titus and we've just hit Titus 2:1-10. Already we've noticed that Paul is concerned about the mental activity of the Cretans. In his introduction, Paul says that it is "knowledge of the truth" that "leads to godliness" (1v1) and his response to bad behaviour on the part of the church in Crete is "instruction in sound doctrine" (1v9).

In my preparation I always like to read through the Greek and jot down my own thoughts before looking at commentaries or other translations simply so that I approach the text with some kind of freshness of mind. As I worked through 2v1-10 I was struck by the prevalence of σώφρων and its cognates (see vv2, 4, 5, 6 and outside 2v1-10 there's 1v8 and 2v12).

The word "σώφρων" means something like "of a sound mind" and the idea is that living sensibly (sound mindedly) will result in curbing of one's desires. The words "temperate" or "self-controlled" are, therefore, sometimes used in translation. In this instance "sensible" (HCSB, RSV, NET) seems like a good translation because it communicates the sound-mindedness of the behaviour. "Self-controlled" is certainly the more common option though (ESV, LEB, NLT, NIV - the ESV has actually reworked this section from the RSV). The trouble is that "self-controlled" lacks the link to thought life. Then there is also the annoying cognate "σωφρονίζω" which means to make someone be "σώφρων" - a concept that English cannot express in a word and so we have "encourage" (HCSB), "train" (ESV, NLT) and "urge" (NIV) but nothing that shows the link Paul is making between a sensible mind and good behaviour ("make the young women sensibly minded so that they love their husbands and love their children").

No translation I have found picks up on all these occurrences and their cognates. But then, it's not good English style to repeat words, English prefers synonyms. The unfortunate result is that as English translations alternate between "self-controlled" and "sensible" and even "train", we lose the emphasis that Paul places on "sensibility" by his repetition.

This is a good example of why I am grateful of the little knowledge I have of Greek: as I read Titus 2, I automatically see a broader theme of Titus, how Paul believes that right thinking leads to right living.