Revelation is hard enough to understand. Looking for what was lost in translation can make it even harder. But my goal is to look back at how this one passage used to be understood. It’s different now. “Who became dead” became “who died”. It sounds so close. And yet – it’s not. The questions are: why not – and why does it matter? The bottom line – your very soul may depend on how you understand these few words.
💻 Before we begin: This is, among other things, a grammar study, but it’s written for ordinary readers, not scholars. The grammar simply helps us ask a larger question: what happens when “who became dead” becomes “who died”? As we will see, even a small change in wording can affect what we notice in the text.
Beyond the grammar though, I also look at differences between various denominations. Intentional differences. You may not be aware, but some are written for ease of reading, while others are written for maintaining the original language meaning. There are also some translations that pay attention to historical and/or cultural details. As you can imagine, it’s impossible to do all those things and still end up with a readable rendering of the original. It might be too long. There may be too many explanatory notes. It will be messy. And so, translations are written for different audiences. That’s a good thing. However, we, the readers, must understand that and choose the right one(s).
This will be primarily a write-up of an AI dialogue – a “conversation” between me and MS Copilot. As needed, I’ll add comments to help you follow along.
The topic is one portion of Revelation 2:8, comparing two translations: the modern 2011 NIV and the older Young’s Literal Translation from the 1800s. In the larger article from which this focused piece came, that puts Young’s Literal Translation as a contemporary of William Ramsey’s book, The letters to the seven churches of Asia and their place in the plan of the Apocalypse – which provided the underlying commentary/analysis in “Smyrna – To/From: Who Speaks, Who Listens, and Why Persecution will increase”.
My AI conversations follow this format, so that you can determine the source of what you’re reading.
❓ My question
🤖✨ Faithlife/LOGOS AI response
✏️ My additional comment – added after the “conversation”
With that, let’s get started.
Why use Young’s Literal Translation rather than a modern one?
As mentioned, Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) and Ramsay’s “The letters to the seven churches of Asia and their place in the plan of the Apocalypse” were written at about the same time. Here’s why that matters:
A quick timeline puts YLT into perspective:
- 1862 – Young’s Literal Translation first published
- 1887 – Young’s own revision
- 1898 – Final revised edition published after his death
- 1880s-1910s – Sir William Ramsay’s major archaeological and historical work on Asia Minor and the seven churches
- 1904 – The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia published
So the YLT text most people read today (1898) was circulating only a few years before Ramsay’s famous book appeared. They belong to essentially the same intellectual era: late Victorian biblical scholarship, intense interest in the original languages, growing archaeological investigation of the biblical world, and a strong desire to recover the historical setting of Scripture.
For your Smyrna work, that’s important because both Young and Ramsay were reacting against different forms of inherited tradition:
- Young tried to let readers see the underlying Hebrew and Greek as directly as possible, even when the English reads awkwardly.
- Ramsay tried to let readers see the actual first-century cities and Roman environment behind Revelation’s letters.
They were asking different questions, but both reflected a late 19th-century push toward getting closer to the original context.
All of that mirrors what I try to do in my Bible studies. My goal is to try to “see and hear” the same things as the people in Biblical times and in the early church. Then, we have the best chance of extrapolating what they knew into something we can understand today – and get what the Spirit has to say to us today, within the context.
The AI conversations begins with a simple question
❓ In Rev 2:8, the Greek words for “who died” are supposed to be verb, aortist, middle, indicative, third person, singular – and – adjective, nominative, singular, masculine. Does “who died” meet those criteria?
✏️ Don’t worry about the grammar terms. All I’m asking here is whether or not the modern translations actually match the grammar from the original Greek writing. If they don’t, then we need to know why – and we’ll find out with more questions.
🤖✨ Not exactly. It depends on what Greek text you’re parsing.
Revelation 2:8 reads:
καὶ ὁ πρῶτος καὶ ὁ ἔσχατος, ὃς ἐγένετο νεκρὸς καὶ ἔζησεν
“the First and the Last, who became dead and lived again“
Let’s look at the two words translated as “who died” in many English versions:
1. ἐγένετο
- Verb
- Aorist
- Middle deponent
- Indicative
- 3rd person singular
So this matches your description:
✅ Verb, Aorist, Middle, Indicative, Third Person, Singular
2. νεκρός
- Adjective
- Nominative
- Singular
- Masculine
This also matches your description:
✅ Adjective, Nominative, Singular, Masculine
So if your source says that’s the phrase translated “who died” consists of:
- ἐγένετο (aorist middle indicative 3rd singular)
- νεκρός (nominative singular masculine adjective)
then the morphology is correct.
One nuance, however:
The Greek does not use the normal verb “to die” (ἀποθνῄσκω) here. John writes:
ἐγένετο νεκρός
literally: “became dead”
This construction emphasizes entering the state of death rather than using a straightforward verb “died.” Many English translations smooth this into “who died” because it reads more naturally:
- NASB: “who was dead, and has come to life”
- NIV: “who died and came to life again”
- ESV: “who died and came to life”
From a strictly grammatical standpoint, “who died” is not a one-for-one translation of either word individually. It is the translation of the combination:
ἐγένετο (became) + νεκρός (dead)
which together convey the idea:
“became dead” → “died.”
For your To/From study, that distinction may be significant because Jesus is identifying Himself not merely as one who experienced death, but as the One who became dead and then lived again (καὶ ἔζησεν), a powerful encouragement to the persecuted church at Smyrna. The parallel structure is:
- ἐγένετο νεκρός = became dead
- ἔζησεν = lived / came to life
So the parsing you were given is correct, but the English phrase “who died” represents the combined sense of the verb and adjective rather than a single Greek verb meaning “died.”
✏️ Sounds like what I was expecting – for my purpose, the NIV translation isn’t accurate as a literal translation of the individual words. If that the case, then the modern translations may very well be preventing us from seeing the full intent of the letter to Smyrna.
Getting lost in the translation
❓ So, technically. from a literal point of view – it’s not correct? I’m comparing NIV to Young’s Literal and looking at what we lose with the easier to read NIV
✏️ This question has to be asked. Since the previous response indicates that the accuracy of a translation depends on what I’m doing, it needs to be narrowed down. This simple fact alone tells us that translations can be and are considered accurate, even though they’re different.
🤖✨ Yes. If you’re evaluating it from a strictly literal perspective, the NIV has interpreted the phrase rather than translated it word-for-word.
The Greek is:
ὃς ἐγένετο νεκρὸς καὶ ἔζησεν
literally:
“who became dead and lived”
or
“who became dead and came to life.”
Parsing:
| Greek | Morphology | Literal Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ἐγένετο | Aorist Middle Indicative 3rd Singular | became |
| νεκρός | Adjective Nominative Singular Masculine | dead |
| ἔζησεν | Aorist Active Indicative 3rd Singular | lived |
Young’s Literal Translation renders it:
“who did become dead and did live”
which is admittedly awkward English, but it preserves the Greek structure.
The NIV renders:
“who died and came to life again”
which communicates the meaning very naturally, but several nuances disappear.
✏️ OK – an issue has been confirmed. Now, the question becomes, first of all, what’s lost? And then, possibly, is the lost meaning significant?
What is lost?
❓ So, what was lost with the phrase translation, as opposed to the individual words?
🤖✨ 1. “Became dead” versus “died”
“Died” focuses on the event.
“Became dead” focuses on entering the condition of death.
John could have used a verb meaning “died” (ἀπέθανεν), but he didn’t. Instead, he described Christ as one who became dead and then lived.
That creates a striking contrast:
became dead
lived
rather than
died
came to life
2. The state of death is emphasized
The adjective νεκρός (“dead”) places emphasis on Jesus actually being in the state of death.
It’s almost as though the text says:
“the one who became a dead man and then lived.”
That may seem subtle, but for Smyrna, facing persecution and martyrdom, that’s powerful. Jesus isn’t merely claiming He passed through death. He entered death’s domain and emerged alive.
3. The literary balance is clearer
The Greek has a simple symmetry:
ἐγένετο νεκρός
καὶ
ἔζησεν
became dead
and
lived
Young’s preserves that balance. NIV replaces it with a smoother interpretation.
Is the NIV wrong?
❓ Is the NIV translation “wrong”?
✏️ Am I saying the NIV translation is wrong? No. What we, as readers, need to be aware of is that each of the various translations has reasons for the translation choices they make. As such, they aren’t wrong. But they do have varying objectives. Therefore, we need to be sure our reasons for using any given translation line up with their goals for that translation.
🤖✨ Not really.
The NIV is giving what translators call a dynamic-equivalent rendering. The translators are asking:
“What would this sentence mean to an ordinary English reader?”
Their answer:
“Who died and came to life again.”
That is a valid interpretation of the Greek.
The more precise statement would be:
The NIV is not literal, but it is accurate to the intended meaning.
For your comparison, I would say:
- Young’s Literal preserves the grammar and imagery.
- NIV preserves the meaning but loses some of the author’s wording and emphasis.
- The biggest nuance lost is that John did not write “who died”; he wrote “who became dead.”
In a “What do we lose?” analysis, that observation is entirely fair and linguistically defensible. It is one of those small choices that most readers pass over, yet it subtly shifts the focus from the condition Christ entered (“became dead”) to the event He experienced (“died”). For a message to the persecuted church of Smyrna, that distinction may be worth lingering over.
✏️ To me, given that we’re studying the impact in Smyrna to learn about possible impacts to us today – that’s important.
Thoughts on the importance of what’s lost
❓ Question: I always pay attention to what’s lost or missing. We didn’t live in that time – so there’s much we don’t know from history, culture, etc – and then when we get “easy to read” over “literal meaning at the time” – we lose even more.
🤖✨ I think that’s a very healthy instinct, especially when you’re working through Scripture seriously rather than simply reading for devotional comfort.
Every translation is doing two things at once:
- Translating words
- Interpreting meaning
The moment a translator decides “ἐγένετο νεκρός” should be rendered “died,” an interpretation has already happened. It’s probably a reasonable interpretation, but it’s still an interpretation.
What often gets overlooked is that we are separated from the original text by multiple layers:
- language (Greek ↔ English)
- culture (1st-century Roman Asia Minor ↔ modern Western society)
- history (roughly 1,900 years)
- theology (traditions developed over centuries)
- translation philosophy (literal, dynamic, paraphrase)
Each layer can obscure something.
✏️ This is probably something we never even think about. And yet, it’s absolutely true that every one of those bullet items, every decision made about them, modifies the English words we end up reading. Actually, there’s more than that list. Just think about slang and idioms. They change even during our lifetimes, in our own country and culture – let alone across hundreds or years.
Expanding the list based on the author of the book being studied
✏️ Now, let’s consider another complicating element. John, the author. He was Jewish. A disciple of Jesus. Part of the early church. Writing for people of his time, especially those familiar with Jewish words and imagery.
❓ Question: In Revelation specifically, that’s especially important because John often chooses unusual wording. If he says “became dead” instead of using a normal verb for “died,” I want to know why. There may not be a profound theological reason, but I don’t want the translator deciding that question for me before I even see the text.
🤖✨ That’s one of the great strengths of Young’s Literal Translation. It frequently lets you see where the Greek is odd, repetitive, or awkward. The downside is that sometimes the English becomes so awkward that the meaning gets harder to grasp.
I often think of translations this way:
| Translation | Primary Goal |
|---|---|
| Young’s Literal | Show me what the text says |
| NASB | Stay close to the text while remaining readable |
| ESV | Balance literalness and English style |
| NIV | Communicate what the translators believe the text means |
| NLT | Communicate the thought in modern English |
None are inherently wrong. They’re answering different questions.
Your observation about what is “missing” is especially valuable because absence can be as important as presence. For example, if John writes:
became dead and lived
and a translation says:
died and came to life again
you might naturally ask:
- Why did John use “became dead”?
- Why didn’t he use the common verb “died”?
- Is there an echo of resurrection language elsewhere?
- Would a Smyrna believer hear something in that wording that I don’t immediately hear?
Those questions often lead to some of the richest study.
❓ Question: One thing I’ve learned over the years is that when a literal translation sounds strange, the strangeness itself is often a clue. Sometimes it’s just Greek idiom. Sometimes it’s deliberately emphasizing something the original audience would have noticed immediately.
🤖✨– For Smyrna, the title feels almost poetic:
the First and the Last,
who became dead
and lived.
That has a stark symmetry that the NIV communicates accurately, but doesn’t quite preserve. A church facing imprisonment and possible martyrdom would hear from the One who had already entered death and emerged victorious. The Greek lets that thought sit there with remarkable simplicity.
So I would say your approach is not merely looking for what’s lost in translation. It’s also looking for what the original author may have intended readers to notice before a translator smoothed the road for us. That’s often where some of the most interesting discoveries are found.
Let’s dig in on an earlier thought about purpose
✏️ I’m going to ask about devotional reading. I’m not against it or knocking it in any way. I;m asking because the purposes of devotional reading and deep study are quite different.
❓ Question: Going back to an earlier item you brought up -especially when you’re working through Scripture seriously rather than reading for devotional comfort. — I read an article from one of the Bible Study sites I subscribe to saying that we don’t understand the Sermon on the Mount, because we don’t pay attention to the strength of the words Jesus used, and so we set the bar too low for our own expectations. But I also feel like they totally left out grace, mercy and God’s love – and instead of showing the depth of God’s love for us they left us feeling like we don’t try hard enough and never will succeed.
🤖✨ I think you’ve put your finger on a tension that has existed in Christianity for a very long time.
What that article may be getting right is that we often domesticate Jesus’ words. We read the Sermon on the Mount and unconsciously lower the standard:
- “Love your enemies” becomes “be nice to difficult people.”
- “Don’t worry” becomes “try not to stress too much.”
- “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” becomes something less demanding than Jesus actually said.
The Greek often is stronger, more radical, and more absolute than we like to admit. In that sense, the article may be correct: we can set the bar lower than Jesus did.
But where some teachers go wrong is treating the Sermon on the Mount as if it were merely a performance standard. Then the message becomes:
“Try harder.”
“You aren’t measuring up.”
“Work harder.”
“Still not enough.”
And eventually people walk away feeling either defeated or self-righteous.
The irony is that if you take the Sermon on the Mount seriously enough, neither response works.
Take Matthew 5:48:
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
If that’s merely a checklist, we’re all finished before we start.
Or consider:
Whoever is angry with his brother…
Whoever looks lustfully…
Love your enemies…
Pray for those who persecute you…
Jesus keeps moving the standard from external behavior to the condition of the heart.
The deeper I study it, the more I see the Sermon doing two things simultaneously:
It raises the bar higher than we imagined
Jesus doesn’t merely prohibit murder.
He addresses the anger behind it.
He doesn’t merely prohibit adultery.
He addresses the desire behind it.
He doesn’t merely regulate enemies.
He commands love for them.
The standard is astonishingly high.
It exposes our need for grace
The same sermon that reveals God’s standard also reveals how far short we fall.
That’s where grace enters.
Not as:
“The standard doesn’t matter.”
But as:
“The standard matters more than you realized, and God loves you more than you realized.”
Some teachers emphasize only the first half. They leave people crushed.
Others emphasize only the second half. They leave people unchanged.
Jesus seems to hold both together.
Your observation reminds me a bit of what you noticed in Revelation 2:8.
The NIV’s “who died” is true, but something is lost when “became dead” disappears.
Similarly, in the Sermon on the Mount, some modern teaching preserves the challenge but loses the love, mercy, and grace surrounding it.
And once those disappear, the sermon can start sounding less like:
“This is the character of life in God’s kingdom.”
and more like:
“Work harder until God is satisfied.”
That’s not the picture I see when I look at Jesus.
The same Jesus who says:
“Be perfect”
also says:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
The sermon begins not with a list of achievers but with people who know they are spiritually needy.
The kingdom is first announced to the people who know they don’t have it all together.
For me, that changes the entire tone of the sermon. The high standard is still there. Nothing is watered down. But it is spoken by a Savior who knows exactly how incapable we are of reaching it on our own.
So I would say your concern is worth paying attention to: sometimes we lose force in translation, but sometimes we lose grace in interpretation. And losing grace may be just as serious as losing the force of Jesus’ words, because both belong to the message He was actually giving.
I hope this was useful. If it was, I’d appreciate a comment to let me know. Doing the actual AI “conversation” isn’t hard at all. It does require care with the questions and analyzing the responses, in order to guide the path of the conversation and keep it on track.
But – the part that takes a lot of time is the formatting. On top of what you see, visually, to try to make it easier to identify my questions, the AI responses, and my added comments, there’s a lot of manual formatting required to identify those same visual cues to those of you who use screen readers/adaptive technology to “read” these AI articles.
It’s important to me that I include as much as I can, limited mostly by resources and because I’m the webmaster, writer, editor, graphics person, and everything else that makes a web site work. In other words – feedback would be appreicated that all this is worthwhile.
Thanks!
chris
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