Meta Description: Join Dr. David Noe and Dr. Jeff Winkle in Ad Navseam Episode 140 as they tackle the ultimate translation debate of John 1:1. Discover why Erasmus chose sermo over verbum, how the Latin language shaped early Christian theology, and why you should never get a tattoo without consulting a classicist first. Plus, a lesson on linguistic denotation and the “No Regerts” of translation.
Introduction: Springtime, Groundhogs, and Bad Tattoos
Welcome back to Episode 140 of the Ad Navseam Podcast! Broadcasting from Vomitorium South, hosts Dr. David C. Noe and Dr. Jeffrey T. Winkle are celebrating a much-needed break in the Michigan winter, inspired by the Punxsutawney groundhog and the transmigration of souls in Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day .
Dr. Noe shares a brilliant cultural observation from a recent trip to Big Rapids: a laser tattoo removal shop aptly named “No Regerts” . Dr. Winkle relates, recalling his days teaching Greek when he had to suppress a cringe as students proudly displayed butchered tattoos that translated to things like “the donut is stale” rather than “virtue forever”,
Before diving into heavy linguistics, Dr. Winkle serves up a custom joke: wanting absolutely no part in his high school mock elections, he demanded his name be withdrawn. Naturally, the yearbook committee voted him “Most likely to secede”.
The Main Event: In the Beginning was the… What?
Today, we are diving deep into some intense linguistic nitty-gritty surrounding one of the most famous verses in human history: the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1 . In the original Greek, it reads: En archē ēn ho logos, kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon, kai theos ēn ho logos (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”).
The hosts base their discussion on a fascinating 1977 article by scholar Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle titled, Sermo: Reopening the Conversation on Translating John 1:1 (published in Vigiliae Christianae), along with her monograph on Erasmus . Dr. Winkle admits he has always severely disliked the traditional English translation of logos as simply “Word,” feeling it is far too simplistic to capture the incredibly rich, heavily laden philosophical and theological concepts embedded in the Greek term. Dr. Noe agrees, noting that translating this massive concept into the Latin language (and subsequently English) was a highly fraught historical endeavor.
The Intellectual Climate of the Early Church
To understand the translation battle, Dr. Noe sets the stage with the intellectual climate of the early Church. The earliest Christians in the 1st century were largely non-intellectualized, with the Apostle Paul being the notable exception of high education. However, by the mid-2nd century, apologists like Justin Martyr began developing rigorous intellectual defenses of the faith.
By the late 2nd and 3rd centuries, heavyweights emerged. Tertullian, a brilliant North African Roman orator and lawyer, began codifying Christian thought and even coined the Latin term trinitas (Trinity). As the church expanded, it split along linguistic lines: a Western tract conducted primarily in Latin, and an Eastern tract conducted in Greek.
In the Latin West, early translators had to decide what to do with logos. Some, like the hymn-writer Marius Victorinus, simply punted and transliterated the word, leaving it as logos. But other scholars wanted a proper Latin equivalent.
Enter Erasmus: The Rebel with a Lexicon
Fast forward to the late 4th century. St. Jerome famously translates the Bible into the Latin Vulgate. (As a side note, Augustine heavily objected to Jerome translating the Old Testament from Hebrew instead of the familiar Greek Septuagint, fearing it would upset the traditional liturgy—though Augustine later admitted Jerome was right ). For John 1:1, Jerome cemented the translation of logos as verbum.
For over a thousand years, In principio erat verbum went entirely unquestioned. Then came 1516, and an “undistinguished theologian” named Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam published his Greek and Latin edition of the New Testament. Erasmus had the absolute audacity—the chutzpah—to suggest that Jerome was wrong. He swapped out verbum and replaced it with sermo.
The ecclesiastical backlash was explosive. A London bishop named Henry Standish raved in the churchyard of St. Paul’s, furious that “a little Greek somebody” was teaching them to abandon a thousand years of church tradition. A Carmelite preacher in Brussels accused Erasmus of attempting to “correct the gospel of St. John,” viewing this linguistic tweak as a direct theological attack.
Ultimately, the Catholic Council of Trent (1547-1563) doubled down on Jerome, officially sanctioning the Vulgate and its use of verbum as the authoritative basis for theological arguments. But Protestant humanists, like Theodore Beza (Dr. Noe’s favorite), strongly agreed with Erasmus, insisting that sermo was the far superior, more accurate translation of logos.
Denotation vs. Connotation: Why Sermo Wins
So, who was right? To answer this, the hosts dive into a linguistics lesson on the difference between denotation and connotation.
- Denotation is the explicit, direct meaning of a word.
- Connotation is the nuanced implication or shade of meaning . For example, “aroma” and “odor” have the exact same denotation (a smell you perceive with your nose). However, “aroma” connotes something pleasant (like coffee), while “odor” connotes something nasty (like the church potluck kitchen).
According to Boyle, logos never means a discrete, single word (a vocable). If a Greek writer wanted to say “a single word,” they would use epos, lexis, or onoma. Logos means a continuous statement, a speech, an oration, or a conversation.
Therefore, Jerome’s choice of verbum is highly inaccurate, because verbum denotes a discrete phoneme or grammatical unit. In fact, Boyle argues that logos and verbum might actually be antonyms!
Sermo, on the other hand, means speech, conversation, and eloquent discourse—perfectly matching the expansive nature of logos. Erasmus correctly pointed out that the oldest Latin translations from North African church fathers like Tertullian and Cyprian exclusively used sermo.
The Theological Safe Choice
If sermo is clearly the better linguistic match, why did Jerome and the later medieval church (like Thomas Aquinas) cling so tightly to verbum?
Boyle theorizes it was a theological defense mechanism. Church fathers like Augustine were desperately battling modalistic heresies (like Sabellianism) and trying to defend the absolute unity of the Trinity. The word sermo (speech/discourse) implies something composite—a sentence made up of many different parts. To the hyper-vigilant theologians, describing the Son of God as a “discourse” felt dangerously close to compromising His divine unity. Verbum (a single, undivided utterance) felt theologically safer, even if it was linguistically impoverished.
As Dr. Winkle notes, verbum was the lazy, simple choice that managed to bypass complex trinitarian traps, but it ultimately robbed the text of its majestic meaning.
Sponsors: Fuel for the Philologist
To keep your own linguistic discourse flowing, the hosts invite you to support the sponsors that make the Ad Navseam bunker run:
- Ratio Coffee: Don’t settle for the mediocre, plastic waste of a Geurik machine. The Ratio 8 and Ratio 6 perform a perfect “bloom” cycle to off-gas bitter CO2, delivering pour-over quality with the push of a button. Keep an eye out for the upcoming Ratio 4! Go to ratiocoffee.com and use code ANCO3Q (Q for Quality!) for 15% off.
- Hackett Publishing: For over 50 years, Hackett has produced high-quality, affordable translations of the classics. From Stanley Lombardo’s Odyssey to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, they have the texts you need . Skip the river-named corporate giants; go to hackettpublishing.com and use code AN2024 for 20% off and free shipping.
- The Moss Method & Latin Per Diem: Want to read Erasmus or the Gospel of John in the original tongues? Dr. Noe’s Moss Method takes you from “neophyte to erudite” in ancient Greek. Or, jump into the Latin language with his Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata (LLPSI) course at latinperdiem.com/llpsi.
The Gustatory Parting Shot
As the hosts wrap up, they hear the bizarre banging of the “Shed Poet Society” building tiny wooden lean-tos above the bunker. They quickly prepare to exit, promising an interview next week with Ken Bratt on the historian Herodotus.
To close the show, Dave shares a highly unusual Gustatory Parting Shot from the poet Kahlil Gibran (author of The Prophet):
“And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart, your seeds shall live in my body, and the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart, and your fragrance shall be my breath, and together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.”
Dr. Noe’s entirely pragmatic response to this profound poetry? “All I can think when I come away from this is apple breath”.Valete! (And stay away from cheap tattoo parlors).
