A word for the Twelve

Morsels of food are delicious because of the little things, the subtle seasonings, the dash of salt, the sprinkle of garlic, the garnish of parsley, the touch of glaze, or the hint of lemon.  Ahhhh - so delicious!

I remember well a friend of mine calling me one Sunday afternoon 20 years ago to discuss a topic he had heard in a Sunday sermon.  The topic moved my friend and changed his understanding of one of Jesus' analogies.  The topic was found in the first two verses of John 15 about pruning grapevines.  The author referred to in the sermon was saying the current slate of translations had not translated accurately, that the analogy was not to pruning unproductive vines, but in lifting the vines running along the ground so that they could produce since they couldn't produce while lying on the ground.

Translation of any language to another is full of explosive mines, so it could be credible that perhaps a new understanding of ancient Greek could change a usual translation, especially if new manuscripts had been discovered.  This was not the case, however, with these verses.  We talked about the topic, but I remember that the follow-up conversation, after a little study, didn't end with any kind of definitive answer on the accuracy of the concept of what was happening with the grapevine.

Today another person raised the exact same topic referencing the same author that my friend had called me about 20 years earlier.  It's strange how things keep getting circulated even it's a generation apart.  In sociolinguistic studies, I have seen how outsiders to a culture don’t always know how insiders are using terms.  The famous matter of having 24 different words for snow in the language of the Eskimo Innuit Indians is a good example.  Erroneous information from an amateur linguist was perpetuated for two generations in that case.  There simply aren’t that many words for snow in the Innuit culture.  Outsiders don't do well when they translate without knowing the culture intimately.  I think what happened in the case of the passage about the grapevine is that the translators of traditional versions didn't know what was involved in growing grapes.  On the other hand, it would appear that the man challenging the traditional concept of pruning didn't allow for or know the number of methods and reasons for trimming, so he overstated his case. A person can watch the video below and be able to discern more properly how to translate the two verses. 

Sometimes, people challenge translations when they have an agenda such as an idea that doesn’t fit a particular philosophy they have about God.  Perhaps the author my friend listened to had such a philosophy and the idea of pruning didn’t follow his idea of a loving God.  It could also be that he didn’t like the judgmental nature of pruning, so he opted to promote a more remote notion of the word’s meaning to his primary definition.  If the author had looked into the context of Jesus’s words and had had more knowledge of tending a vineyard of grapes, he could have written a really nice context for the usual translations. 

Important to the context of this passage is knowing who Jesus is addressing in the different portions of his dialog.  In verse 3, the παν of verse 2 changes to  υμεις, presumably you all meaning the Twelve, but maybe everyone hearing   his voice at the time if there were more people around him than the Twelve.  υμεις continues to be the pronoun of choice in verses 3, 4, and 5. Verse 5 ends the use of υμεις in the phrase  υμεις τα κληματα, claiming the Twelve or the group hearing Jesus represent branches.  However, in verse 5, there is a transition to the one, which becomes the impersonal τις (anyone) in verse 6.  So, the story starts with παν (all or everyone) narrows to υμεις (you all - the Twelve or the group around Jesus) then changes to singular, impersonal using o (the one) and τις (someone), which in reality could still mean one of the group or someone in the group rather than someone in general .  By verse 8, υμεις is again used, but identified as μαθηται (disciples).  Jesus appears to be addressing his close followers rather than all Christians in general.  Given that the lives and deaths of the Twelve would require them knowing that they would undergo some trimming, Jesus knew they would need to have words to draw on for their trials.  This context preempts a view of a judgmental, vengeful vinedresser pruning his vines.

But here’s the tasty morsel.  If one focuses on the word γεωργος (the vinedresser) in the first verse of John 15, one would have a different idea of what the trimming idea was all about.  The man you hear in the video above is a true "vinedresser."  He is deliberate in his descriptions, a slow-talking, country man who knows from vast experience what he is talking about.  In Greek the word is derived from a compound word meaning to work the earth.  The γεωργος watches carefully and knows how to make grapes grow by properly trimming in the right places at the right times of the growing season, not vengefully inspecting branches to yank and tear off the branches without fruit. Verse 2 is also clear that παν το καρπο φερον (all who bear fruit) also get a trimming.  The γεωργος isn’t looking to burn people in Hell for not producing fruit, he is carefully looking to direct and redirect events in our lives so that those events illustrate his personal attention.  The cultural overlay of knowing how to grow grapes helps in knowing a context for words that would motivate the Twelve after Jesus’s ascension.

The point of the analogy is probably not getting rid of those who don't bear fruit since the pronoun referents change, nor is it in helping those who need lifting from the ground so that they can't grow fruit because καθαιρει in verse 2 clearly means to remove or trim, not to lift up off of the ground.  Instead, the point is to show a caring owner of a vineyard tending his grapes by stimulating healthy, growing vines, trimming leaves for sunlight, trimming clusters for large grapes, and removing a certain number of stems.  Thus, he nurtures the branches growing from the main vine, which is the summary of the analogy found in verse 8.  Jesus was being very deliberate in developing the Twelve, making sure they knew his mind.