An early Christian leader, whose name might have been Timothy, had questions, and some of his questions must have been about bishops, because this is part of the answer he received:

“Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money. ” — 1 Timothy 3:2-3

If you’re like me, this inspires the further question: Wait, did churches really need to be told not to elect a bunch of drunk inhospitable quarrelsome bishops? This seems kind of obvious, really. I mean, it’s not like the Council of Nicea had even happened yet.

If you’re like a certain number of translators, though, you might think of a different follow-up question: How can we translate this verse to make sure it only applies to men?

So, what do we know about Phoebe? First, we know that she was really great.  Second, we know that she was a deacon.

What does this mean?

In English, diakonos is usually translated with words like servant, helper, minister, and, yes, deacon. Which of these words should be used to refer to Phoebe? We know that she was trustworthy, that she did something for the church in Cenchreae, and that she was really helpful. What word best expresses that?

This one is a little complicated, because we are looking at the translation of two different words.

…or are we??? (Spoiler: We are not.)

Shocking news! Gentiles have received the Holy Spirit!

The apostles and some other people heard this amazing news. Which other people were those?

Once again, the real issue here is that plenty of translators persist in pretending that “brothers” actually includes sisters.

To understand this verse, we need to talk about numbers, and vocabulary, and also poetry. You have been warned.

Who is being told about God’s name, and in whose midst is God being praised? I bet you can already tell what the problem is going to be.

Jacob, aka Israel, is famous for having sons. Like, really famous. So famous that Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a song about it, although he also wrote a whole musical about cats, so Jacob probably shouldn’t let it go to his head.

The most famous of Jacob’s famous sons is Joseph, and this is how he is introduced: “Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children…” Genesis 37:3a, NRSVUE.

Just how dysfunctional was this family, anyway?

You can usually count on Paul to give you some nice, complicated grammar to argue about, but this one is not even a little bit ambiguous.

The word we are translating here is “uioi”, which, in Koine Greek, can refer to children in general, or specifically to male children (sons).

Ah, Junia. Her name appears in the Bible exactly once, in this verse. The name, however, is a perfectly normal name for a woman in that time and place. Lots of women were named “Junia”. So, why is this difficult, exactly?

Acts 2:15 is hilarious to start with, because what just happened? Oh, right, a bunch of people came pouring out of this house and they were all talking at once, and yet absolutely everyone could understand them perfectly. If that happened, I would not be thinking “these people must be drunk”.