Lost in Translation: Recovering the Origins of Familiar Biblical Words

by Joel S. Baden

The Bible is words--it is, at the end of the day, nothing more than that. How those words have been read and understood has formed the basis of everything from private faith to public policy for two thousand years. Yet for the most part, casual readers--and even many professional interpreters, clerical and scholarly--are unaware of how culture has impacted the commonly accepted meanings of so many words and terms. To read the Bible well is to understand that the text is not the same as its interpretation and translation. To care about the Bible is to recognize where the past two millennia of cultural change have shaped our understanding of the biblical text, and to sift through it, to see what the Bible once was so that we can better understand what the Bible now is--and how we, its readers, came to be who we are.

188 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 19, 2025

About the author

Joel S. Baden is professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School. He is the coauthor, with Candida R. Moss, of Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby and Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness (both Princeton). He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Reviews

[Cameron Burkholder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tore through this book because I found pretty much every chapter interesting. The book contains 39 bite sized chapters, each focused on a word for which the original meaning or nuance has been lost. I think this approach works perfectly because it made it incredibly easy to pick up and put down the book throughout the day.

Baden's knowledge of the material really shines through, pointing out the differences in meaning or usage that aren't clear today but poke through with the relevant context in mind. For example, how phrases like "my soul thirsts for Yahweh" obscure the Hebrew association with the underlying word for soul with the throat, or how the name "Jehovah" was the result of a Christian misunderstanding of Jewish scribal practices, or the ironies in how the meaning of Sabbath and leprosy have changed over time. Super interesting stuff.

The cherry on top is Baden's dry, witty sense of humor. Excellent read.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

We might not think to much about the words as we read the Bible. Sure, we know it is a translation but Baden really opened my eyes to what that might mean. Some of our biblical concepts may come from outside the Bible. An example is cherubs. The pudgy angels we have in our mind come from the painter Raphael and not at all from the Bible. Cherubs are in fact guards, not angels (messengers).

Baden takes into account modern scholarship to help us understand what words meant originally, often in contrast to what we think they mean now. Some of his conclusions went against my childhood Sunday School lessons on hell (Sheol) and Satan, for example. His work is certainly food for thought, even if some might not like his conclusions.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. Mine is an independent and honest review.