Re: why isn't BAPTIZW translated?
DWILKINS@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Wed, 18 Sep 1996 1:44:31 -0700 (PDT)
My usual apologies for being late to pick up this thread. My experience has
been that there are several reasons for such transliterations. One is simply
traditional, although a tradition probably has a reason originally behind it.
Certainly translating BAPTIZW as "immerse" would turn up the heat again--
there have been many old works written on this issue from different denomi-
national perspectives. There also has to be a good reason to buck well-
established traditions, a "hill to die on" if you will, and Bible trans-
lations that no one buys or uses because of the translation's iconoclastic
tendencies are self-destructive. Then, too, you would be probably be sur-
prised out how much of the English language is really just transliteration,
and very often foreign words in their original forms; so transliteration is
an old and commonplace art in English.
Don Wilkins
UC Riverside