International Institute of Jesus Christ
Luke 15
Translated straight from the SBLGNT, with the grounds of every decision on the page.
Why this rendering
Luke.15.4 Observation
Syntactic observation
The same story as Matthew 18:12-14, and **the way the sheep goes missing differs.** Matthew has πλανηθῇ, if **one of them strays** — the sheep leaves of itself. Luke has **ἀπολέσας**, having **lost** one — with **the man as subject**: the sheep did not stray, he lost it. That is why the word runs through the whole chapter: ἀπόλλυμι comes eight times across seven verses of ch.15 (4 twice, 6, 8, 9, 17, 24, 32) — sheep, coin and son are all lost by one verb. In Matthew's parallel that verb stands at **one place only**, the conclusion (18:14 ἀπόληται). Where the ninety-nine are left differs too — Matthew ἐπὶ τὰ ὄρη, **on the mountains**; Luke ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, **in the wilderness** — and so does the verb of leaving, Matthew ἀφήσει against Luke's **καταλείπει**. The seeking differs most: Matthew has **ἐὰν γένηται εὑρεῖν αὐτό**, **if he should happen to find it**, a condition; Luke **ἕως εὕρῃ αὐτό**, **until he finds it**, which is not. And Luke alone carries on: onto his shoulders (15:5), calling friends and neighbours together (15:6), rejoice with me. συγχαίρω, to rejoice with, stands three times in the corpus and **all three are Luke's** — 15:6, 15:9, and **1:58**, where Elizabeth's neighbours rejoice with her. The close differs as well: Matthew, it is not the will of your Father that one of these little ones should **perish**; Luke, there is joy in heaven over one sinner **repenting**. μετανοέω and μετάνοια are absent from Matthew's parallel. Matthew 18:13 has ἀμήν; **Luke does not.**
Rendering options · 2
Basis These two are where the books part. Rendering it as if the sheep strays imports Matthew's word and breaks the first of the seven places ἀπόλλυμι binds in ch.15. The same for the condition: Matthew's is one and Luke's is not.
Basis It is one parable, so the reader sees the parallel more easily, and the sense carries without naming who lost it.
Rejected Who lost it is the datum here. In Matthew the sheep strays; in Luke the man loses it — the two books put the responsibility in different places in one story. Blurring erases that, and hides that the whole chapter is bound by one verb.
Why this rendering
Luke.15.8 Observation
Syntactic observation
This parable is **Luke's alone** and is built to pair with the sheep before it — one man and one woman, one lost out of a hundred and one out of ten, and the two closing in the same sentence (συγκαλεῖ … Συγχάρητέ μοι ὅτι εὗρον). The words hold the pairing up. δραχμή stands three times in the corpus and **all three are here** (15:8 twice, 15:9). ἐπιμελῶς, carefully, is a **corpus hapax**. But σαρόω, to sweep, is different: it stands three times, and **Matthew 12:44 and Luke 11:25 are the same place** — the unclean spirit returns and finds the house **swept** — with the third here. So the only two houses swept in this corpus are one standing empty for a spirit's return and one swept to find a coin. The text does not state the link. συγκαλέω, to call together, occurs once in Mark and four times in Luke, two of the four being here (15:6, 15:9) and the others 9:1 (calling the Twelve together) and **23:13** (Pilate calling together the chief priests, the rulers and the people). And this parable's close differs from the previous one by a word: v.7 has χαρὰ **ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ**, joy **in heaven**; v.10 χαρὰ **ἐνώπιον τῶν ἀγγέλων τοῦ θεοῦ**, joy **before the angels of God**. The same thing said twice, with the place of the joy written differently.
Rendering options · 2
Basis Coin names are fixed as transliterations in this edition (denarius, assarion, lepton, kodrantes). And though vv.7 and 10 look like the same statement twice, their phrases differ; matching them erases that the base text wrote them differently. Of thirteen versions examined only four transliterate (개역한글, YLT, LSV, WEB) and the rest render by value; this edition is with the minority, but transliterating coins is fixed here.
Basis A reader does not know what a drachma is, so a value renders it readable; and the two closes mean the same, so matching them makes the repetition plain.
Rejected Transliteration is fixed because more than three coins appear and their values differ — rendering denarius, drachma and lepton all as a silver coin makes it impossible to weigh Matt 20:2, which prices the denarius at a day's wage. And that the two closes mean the same is a judgement, not the text: the text writes heaven once and before the angels once.
Lost in translation
The φίλας of v.9 is **feminine**, so the Greek says by its ending that the women the woman calls are her women friends; the φίλους of v.6 is masculine. Korean 벗 and English friends carry no gender, so the pairing does not cross over in the form — the last layer of the man-and-woman symmetry thins here.
Why this rendering
Luke.15.20 Observation
Syntactic observation
Four verbs run through one verse — saw, was moved with compassion, ran and fell on his neck, kissed him. Three of them are caught by the counts. σπλαγχνίζομαι stands eleven times in the corpus, and only three of those have a subject other than Jesus: Matt 18:27 (a master in a parable), Luke 10:33 (the Samaritan), Luke 15:20 (the father). **Two of the three are Luke's**, and Luke's three places (7:13, 10:33, 15:20) are all in **stories only Luke has**. τράχηλος, neck, stands four times: Matt 18:6, Mark 9:42 and Luke 17:2 are all **a millstone hung around the neck**, and only this fourth is a father's arms around one — Luke holds both (15:20, 17:2). καταφιλέω, to kiss, stands five times, and **Matt 26:49 and Mark 14:45 are Judas's kiss**. But **Luke does not use this verb of Judas** — 22:47 has φιλῆσαι (φιλέω) and 22:48 φιλήματι (φίλημα). So Luke's three καταφιλέω are 7:38 and 7:45, the woman kissing his feet, and this one. In this corpus, then, one verb is the mark of betrayal in Matthew and Mark and the sinner's love and the father's welcome in Luke. The son's prepared speech comes twice, and **its ending differs**: at vv.18-19 he prepares as far as ποίησόν με ὡς ἕνα τῶν μισθίων σου, make me as one of your hired men — but at v.21, when he actually speaks, **he does not get that far**, because the father turns to the slaves. μίσθιος stands twice in the corpus and both are inside that prepared speech (15:17, 15:19).
Rendering options · 2
Basis The clause is not in v.21 of the base text. Set vv.18-19 beside v.21 and the datum is that **the speech does not reach its end**. Supplying it makes the two speeches identical and the break disappears.
Basis Some manuscripts carry the clause, and it reads more naturally if the prepared and the spoken speech agree.
Rejected The base text does not carry it (DECISIONS C1). And that it reads more naturally is itself a reason the clause may have been filled in later — the hand that matches a speech to its rehearsal could have worked in the manuscripts too. That judgement is not made here; what is recorded is what the base text reads. And of thirteen versions examined **not one** supplies the clause — not even KJV, ASV, YLT and LSV, which follow a different base-text family.
Lost in translation
καταφιλέω is φιλέω with κατά, so the Greek carries a sense of kissing **again and again, or hard**. Korean 입을 맞추다 and English kiss cannot hold it. Yet in this corpus the places that take the prefix and the places that do not are divided, and that division separates Judas from the father. It does not cross over in the rendering and survives only in this record.
Why this rendering
Luke.15.24 Observation
Syntactic observation
The father says the same thing twice — once at v.24 and once at v.32 — and **the verb differs.** v.24 has νεκρὸς ἦν καὶ **ἀνέζησεν**, was dead and **lived again**; v.32 νεκρὸς ἦν καὶ **ἔζησεν**, was dead and **lived**. ἀναζάω is a **corpus hapax**; ζάω stands thirty-five times. So between two repeated sentences one prefix drops away. What the son is called changes too: v.24 **ὁ υἱός μου**, my son; v.32 **ὁ ἀδελφός σου**, your brother. Speaking to the elder son the father does not say my son but your brother. The second clause holds: both have ἀπολωλὼς καὶ εὑρέθη, was lost and was found — the two verbs that bind the chapter. εὐφραίνω, to be merry, stands six times in the corpus and **all six are Luke's**, four of them in this passage (23, 24, 29, 32). At v.29 it is used by the elder son of the merriment **he never had**. The other two are **12:19**, the rich man telling his own life to eat, drink and be merry, and **16:19**, the rich man faring merrily every day — so of the six places the verb stands, two are a rich man's merriment and four are the feast over what was lost and found. So one verb attaches to the feast and to the one who will not go into it.
Rendering options · 2
Basis The base text uses different verbs, and where a repeated sentence changes by one word, that change is the datum. The dropped prefix can be carried straight over by dropping the rendering's own prefix — nothing is lost here. Of thirteen versions examined only four keep the two verses apart (개역한글, NASB, ESV, NET); the rest put again into v.32 as well and make the two alike.
Basis That the father says the same thing twice is part of the parable's build, so matching brings the repetition out.
Rejected He does not say the same thing twice — he says **nearly** the same thing twice. And ἀναζάω occurs only this once in the corpus, so matching erases that once. The repetition is already carried by the second clause, was lost and was found, which does not change.
Why this rendering
Luke.15.29 Observation
Syntactic observation
Three words in the elder son's speech are caught by the counts. ἔριφος, a goat, stands twice in the corpus, the other being **Matthew 25:32**, the separating of sheep from goats — and Matthew changes the word in the very next verse, 25:33, to **ἐρίφιον**, a little goat, a form found only there. So goats stand at three places in this corpus, two of them consecutive in Matthew 25, with the word changing within one verse. πόρνη, a prostitute, stands three times: Matt 21:31, 21:32, and **here** — but it must be recorded who says it. **The text says only ζῶν ἀσώτως, living wastefully, at v.13, and never mentions prostitutes.** The prostitutes first appear in the elder son's mouth. ἀσώτως is a corpus hapax. βίος stands six times, twice in this chapter: at v.12 the father **divides his βίος** between them (διεῖλεν αὐτοῖς τὸν βίον), and at v.30 the elder son says his brother **devoured** it. Yet the same word stands at Mark 12:44 and Luke 21:4 for **the whole βίος** the widow puts in. vv.12 and 13 also part by a word: what the son asks for is τὸ ἐπιβάλλον μέρος τῆς **οὐσίας**, the share of the **property** falling to him, and what the father divides is τὸν **βίον**, the **living**. οὐσία stands twice in the corpus and both are in this chapter (15:12, 15:13).
Rendering options · 2
Basis The text does not say at v.13 what he did. What is said at v.30 is said by the elder son, and the text does not say whether he is right. Importing prostitutes into v.13 turns the elder son's charge into narration — a thing this edition does not do. οὐσία and βίος are used apart by the base text at vv.12-13 and are kept apart.
Basis v.30 says so, and if the reader knows it already at v.13 the story runs smoothly and what wastefully means is made plain.
Rejected v.30 is **not narration but the elder son's speech**. The parable sets the two sons side by side and adjudicates neither; putting prostitutes into v.13 makes the text confirm the elder son's charge. The father himself neither confirms nor denies it at vv.31-32. The gap is left as a gap. Of thirteen versions examined not one imports prostitutes into v.13 — this is a road that comes from commentary and preaching rather than from the versions.
Lost in translation
βίος is both life and livelihood — the widow at Mark 12:44 put in her whole βίος, and here the father divides his. Korean 살림 and English living carry a little of both, but not enough to hold the widow's place and this one on one word. The split from οὐσία does cross over; that βίος also opens toward life does not.