Help! This tribe has no numbers!

Thank God for consultants! As well as providing the necessary training ahead of time, NTM also provides its tribal missionaries with a team of consultants who are trained in providing additional help, guidance and ongoing support to missionaries after they get to the field. And nowhere was that more of a lifesaver to me than in the daunting task of Bible translation.

Nothing reduced me to tears more often than struggling to do justice to the Word of God for a people who have no concept of legal systems, agriculture, geography, other cultures or even numbers. So when the Bible speaks of laws, cattle, oceans or nations, for example, I had to choose between borrowing a word from Spanish and hoping they would eventually understand it, or amplifying the text to explain what was meant.

But when it came to numbers, Spanish was the only option.

Since the Yanomami numbering system consisted of only one, two and many, we were already teaching Spanish numbers to anyone willing to learning them. As the people began to deal with a world beyond their horizons, we knew they would need to understand a complete numbering system in order to use watches, calendars, medicines, weights, money or even to find a page in a book or a chapter in the Bible.

So I started right off using Spanish numbers in the translation as well. But to make sure it would be understood correctly, I would try it out on some of the local people. Those comprehension checks were full of surprises.

“Listen to this!” I said to Samuelito one morning, full of confidence. “You're going to like this story!” I began to read him a rough draft translation of the parable about the shepherd who had 100 sheep and how one of them had wandered away.

In retrospect, I don't know why I thought it would be easy. Sheep and shepherds had never been a part of Samuelito’s world. And neither had numbers, although by now he could count to a hundred in Spanish. And even when it came to things he was familiar with, like mountains, he usually wanted more specific detail than the Bible offered.

Samuelito bowed his head for a moment and tried to visualize what I had just read to him.

“OK,” he said. “Let me tell the story back to you and we’ll see if I understand it right. The sheeps’ uncle apparently left one of them behind somewhere, and then he couldn't find it ....”

(That’s right. He said the sheeps’ uncle. I had referred to the shepherd as “the one who cares for the sheep” and Samuelito understood that to mean the animals’ “uncle” which is a term they use for the owner of a family pet.) 

“Well, no,” I said. “The sheep wasn't left behind by its uncle. It wandered off on its own.”

“All right,” he nodded, thinking he now understood, “Ninety-nine sheep wandered off somewhere, and their uncle left the other ones on the mountain .... Where, exactly, on the mountain?”

Since the mountain was the only concept he really understood, he thought he should know exactly where the sheep were – near the top, near the bottom, or near the sides – so he could really see it in his mind and give it back to me accurately.

I decided on the spur of the moment that the sheeps' uncle had left them part way up the mountain, since nothing more specific is recorded in Matthew 18:12 anyway. Then I gave him a quick review before he made a new attempt.

“OK,” I said hopefully, “So 99 sheep were left on the mountain. Part way up. And there was just one of them that was lost somewhere.”

“Then where were the hundred? Didn't you say there were 100 somewhere?” Samuelito was now hopelessly confused and increasingly frustrated. Sheep were coming and going and he couldn’t keep track of them anymore!

“Well, yes, there were a hundred altogether ....” My voice suddenly trailed off as I realized that being able to count to 100 was not going to solve this riddle for Samuelito. He also needed to be able to subtract! 

That’s when the consultant’s words began ringing afresh in my ears:  “You’ll have to expand the text, to make the message clear. Amplification is not just OK, it’s absolutely necessary.”

So I decided to leave the offending passage to one side for a few moments, and just relax with a cup of coffee and talk about the application. All the furrows in his brow disappeared when I quit torturing him with numbers and began to talk about Jesus as our Shepherd. Now he was on familiar territory.

“Ah! That's so true!” Samuelito said, his face glowing with happiness. “There are believers that nobody takes into account at all, but God does. He keeps track of each one, and loves all the ones that nobody else thinks are important – all of His little ones!  He’ll never let us go astray.”

 The final draft that went to the printshop said: “Leaving the 99 that were left on the mountain, he went searching for the one that was lost.”

The addition of the phrase “that were left” solved the problem.

And I’m glad I’m not one of the ones “that were left” out there all alone to do Bible translation, without help, advice, second opinions, fresh insights and ongoing training, from those who have far more knowledge than I do. So as I said, thank God for consultants!