More about Mistranslation of Romans 10:10

Romans 10:10 is mistranslated in all Bibles in any language I can read (i.e., English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French). The general translation goes something like this, in the major translations:

"NAU Romans 10:10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation."

"NIV Romans 10:10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved."

"KJV Romans 10:10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

"YLT Romans 10:10 for with the heart doth one believe to righteousness, and with the mouth is confession made to salvation;"

"RSV Romans 10:10 For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved."

The correct translation should instead go like this (correction is in caps): "NAU (corrected) Romans 10:10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting FROM salvation."

Greek chaining of the "eis" preposition was missed by the translators, despite over 6000 occurrences of it in the Bible. So for centuries, Christians have mistakenly believed you had to admit aloud you believed, to be saved. What bad scholarship.

If you want to see a comprehensive display of the circular eis chains in at least the New Testament, search on "eis chaining" in Youtube. I recorded them live from BibleWorks, so you can see for yourself.

Explaining the mistake, will occupy the rest of this webpage. Sorry, it will be technical.

This small example of Romans 10:10 tells you the big story, as is so often true: a microcosm, showing the macrocosm. See, Scripture is only Divinely Inspired in the original languages, because God "breathed" into the men who initially wrote in those languages, the information. Translations are made by men, not God, and there's a politically-correct slant given the translation, to cater to man's acceptance (Caveat #2 has details). So translated Bibles aren't good: that's why they are so weird to read, lol.

Both main classes of Biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek inspired texts of the OT, and Greek for NT, were specially developed as relating-to-God languages. You can't read Greek without being constantly aware of the thorough infusion of the Greek pantheonic culture into every syllable: Bible uses the pagan meanings to tweak them, and correct the Greek idea of Virtue, God, etc -- to the Real Divine Meaning. If you don't know the culture, you won't know the tweaking, so you'll misinterpret. Same, for the Hebrew, which of course is also about the Real God. So, to properly translate, you must know the cultural connotations embedded in every syllable. For example, if you don't know that Ephesians is a tweaking of a famous play regarding the mythical origin of the Greek peoples (Euripedes' "Ion"), to Show God's Superior Begetting, you'll really mess up Ephesians. Hence, like the Hebrew, the Greek language family (5, in Scripture) requires many more English words to properly translate, generally.

Translation especially suffers with regard to 'small' features, like prepositions. Greek preposition "eis" often means "because of" or "with reference to", especially when the object of the preposition isn't a physical place. In such meanings, you are to understand that the object of the preposition is the CAUSE of the action of the verb. For example, there are two uses of "eis" in Romans 10:10. The first one is eis dikaiosunen, and that's the cause of your belief in Christ: to BECOME Righteous (i.e., Gen15:6, 2Cor5:21). So, eis dikaiosunen also becomes a RESULT: you believed BECAUSE you wanted to be saved, so the result is, you ARE. All this, referenced in this verse via the one Criterion for life with God you need met: dikaiosune ("n" is added for the accusative case), the Bible's technical word for Divine Righteousness. For, "eis" also means, "with reference to". Because, with reference to, result. All these meanings first apply, when the object of the preposition, is not a physical place.

This doubled use of eis is elsewhere in Scripture. Since there were over 6,000 paired uses of eis in the best Greek text I have, and not all of those can be parallelisms, I can't tell you HOW many of these doubled uses are in Scripture. By happenstance (yeah, right) I just discovered one in Col2:2, while checking that verse for something else. (Col2:2 is also mistranslated in all versions -- mainly, because no one gets sumbibazw, TEACHING a SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION, BODY OF DOCTRINE, correct; even though lexicons like Bauer, Danker explain INSTRUCTION is key to the meaning, the type of systematic 'unitedness' in view. "Love" is a Bible moniker for Christ, His Thinking, aka Bible Doctrine as well: baldly, here in Col2:2; but also in Rom5:5, all of 1Cor13, the refrain "rooted and grounded in Love", i.e., in Eph3:17, other verses.)

Greek preposition eis in the last clause of Col2:2 should also be translated like its counterpart in Rom10:10, "due to": hence the Col2:2 clause's translation should be "due to the mystery doctrine of God: Christ." So it's a resulting in riches (first clause in Col2:2), due to, resulting FROM, His Thinking.

Even Logic would tell you this; just as logic should turn on in Rom10:10, duh. With respect to Rom10:10, if you bothered to cross-reference Scripture like even the Bible tells you to do, you'd find that hundreds of verses in OT and New tell you faith-in-Christ (aka Redeemer-to-come, in OT), is what saves you, Gen15:6; which is why you CAN admit you believe, duh. Likewise, in Col2:2, you get mastery-of-wisdom (Gk: sunesis) as a result of the cause, the special doctrine for Church, Christ's Thinking. Information has to go IN, first, before it can result in anything: so the first eis clause in Col2:2 is the result, the second eis clause is the cause.

Since Greek sentence-structure rhetoric normally places last what is normally most important, both Rom10:10 and Col2:2 end up reversing chronological order, compared to each other. Rom10:10 is in chrono order, whereas Col2:2 puts the result first, to stress the cause. This has the effect of superstressing the result nature, which of course the riches metaphor reinforces extremely. (BTW: Greek word translated "mystery" is a special Bible keyword for the knowledge of Christ Church alone gets; Greek "mystery" isn't something unknown, but something Known Only To Those Members In A Specific Group. Hence the Elysian 'mysteries' were cult doctrines and practices only known to those members of that pagan sect, etc.)

Traditions among men impose strange gods. One of these traditions stupidly forces the translator to translate "eis" as the truncated English "to" or "into". So, obedient to both tradition and Bible, we could rephrase these three abstract meanings as: "due to" (because), "with reference to" (concerning), and "to result IN" or "to result FROM". In this latter "result" usage, if eis appears twice in a passage using parallelism, such as in Rom10:10, you must show both results: in, and from. It's a CIRCLE. First use is an "in", second result comes from the "in" result. Else, you're (unwittingly or knowingly) lying against the Scripture's meaning. However, notice that, so long as you obey the doubled-result circle, you can use each of the three abstract meanings of eis and see connected, operating facets of the living structure of your salvation (or, your learning Christ, in Col2:2). Only God is this smart. No wonder the Word is alive (Heb4:12). Play with it, see for yourself.

So, here in Rom10:10, a tweaking parallel to Deut30:11ff (where they mouthed but didn't believe), one says aloud he believes because he already believed and is already saved. Now, how do you thus translate eis soterian, the two Greek words at the end of Romans 10:10, to show all that meaning? It's not easy! Oddly, here the Geneva Bible's English is closest to the Greek meaning: other English Bible translations are pathetic. (Of the non-English translations I could read, only the Portuguese ARA looks right, assuming "respeito" means with respect to".) Geneva's translation (in my BibleWorks software) goes like this:

"GNV Romans 10:10 For with the heart man beleeueth vnto [eis] righteousnes [dikaiosunen], and with the mouth man confesseth to [eis] saluation [soterian]."[In olde English -- here, 1550 -- the u's and v's are 'backwards', reflecting the French origin of a lot of English words.]

So too, the accusative, famously used instead of the nominative in Greek Drama and Bible, like in the famous Romans 8:28. Accusative is object, nominative is Subject, so in that verse, the Subject is God as the Object of our thoughts, so in Greek is in the accusative case; English of course can't show this. Going on with the Greek meaning, Good Results from Him. Again, English can't show how the Greek Drama use of verbs displays: in Greek Drama, the hero converts an intransitive verb, here "works together", into a transitive verb, which can therefore act on an object, "agathos", GOD's-level-of-good (it's a technical word in Greek). Just like the heroes of Greek drama always did. Just like Christ did, with our sins. For Father is the Uppermost Motive in Christ. It's For Father, or forget it. Thank God! No smaller reason for living need choke our lives!

So it's not surprising that every verse in Bible thus depicts the dynamic of Infinity, an endless CIRCLE, CYCLING. So too, with the preposition "eis", going into, coming OUT OF, hence in English, "due to", because. Cause and effect, endlessly cycling. So, in the Greek, Rom10:10 shows this cycling as a parallelism, with "eis" used twice. So the Greek reader clearly understands he is permanently saved By Belief Only. God converted belief into righteousness, just as in Gen15:6. So, that result (another meaning of eis), causes a second result: the person can 'confess' the result, that he's saved. Of course, in both Greek and Hebrew, "heart" is a metaphorical depiction of thinking, never emotion. But people who want to lie against the Bible will say stupid things like a head vs. heart belief. Since when did a physical pump, think? What part of man believes, except thinking? Oh, don't confuse the emotional with facts!

Bible's inspired languages have God's Meanings, never man's. So man of course imposes his own meanings, on God. Just like Adam and the woman did, in Gen3. Not good enough for her, that God only said if she eats, she will die twice (spiritually, and therefore physically), Gen2:17 (always mistranslated). So, she adds to God's meaning, "Neither shall you touch it" (Gen 3:3). So too, in Bible translating, we 'process' God's meanings to suit our own preferences. Never mind if we thus LIE against Him, in the process.

So, coming back to the Geneva translation of Rom10:10 -- see how "to salvation" is rendered from "eis soterian"? Again, that's done as a standard translation rule man imposes on Bible translators, that you always translate with the same word in english, no matter how misleading a result. See how English use of "to" is vague? Moreover, "soterian" often doesn't mean "salvation", but rather, "rescue", "delivery". Here in Rom10:10, we know it's really "salvation", because of the first clause, "believes into Righteousness".

So the Geneva translation of the second clause, "Confesseth to salvation" is good: you can easily see that because you are saved, you are ABLE to say so. "Confesseth" is the same Greek word as in 1Jn1:9, Greek courtroom verb homologew, to admit/name/agree with a verdict or accusation. Lit., "to say the same thing" as Someone Else Testifies, get it? So you say you believe, because you do; that's the first clause of the verse; you ARE righteous, thus saved, so you can truthfully ADMIT you are saved. Because you are saved, you can say so. But, look at the other English translations, and they all lie, making it sound like you must say it aloud in order to BE saved -- which is the opposite of the Greek.

Thus you know how so many Christians can screw up their interpretations of God's Holy Word. Yes, we're responsible for getting it wrong, for lying, because of the Divine Tools available to us. Yet, It's a miracle, to get it right! So no need to blame those who get it wrong: every need, to wonder and appreciate, the enormous Grace of God! Pray for exposure to the correct interpretation! This is a time-consuming job. So empathy is a must.

For watch this: whoever wrote the translation of Romans 10:10 for the New American Standard Bible (1995, in my BibleWorks), recognized that "eis" has a "result" meaning. That took great courage, to do, given the tyrannical rule about translating "eis" as "to" or "into". So here's how he translated the verse:

"NAU Romans 10:10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation."

So, either the translator couldn't think beyond that first courageous "resulting in", so repeated it again; or wasn't allowed to show both the "in" and "from" meanings, though the Greek does. Again, because the longstanding stupid tradition is to always translate the same way. So he mistranslates (or is forced to mistranslate) The parallelism in the second clause. Had he compared Scripture with Scripture, which is the first rule of Bible translation, as well as interpretation, he'd have known that he contradicts Bible in the way he translates the second clause, even if he still didn't clue in that he was mistranslating the verse!

Do you now see how a mistranslation results? That stupid tradition infects the translation of Scripture, everywhere! So, as in Col2:2, mentioned above; so, as here, in Rom10:10, the same tradition screws up the translation. Here in Romans 10:10, just one word off in the English of NASB's Rom10:10, reverses the meaning of the Greek inspired text! Should have been "resulting in..resulting FROM", not two "in" words! All the other English Bibles have similar gaffes in translation. It's appalling, and every verse in Bible has some such problem: chopped out meanings, or words put in which aren't meant in the original language. So you can't trust a translation: but you CAN trust in 1Jn1:9, which puts you online with the Spirit (see Caveats #2, and #3). Whew.

Oh, what a mess, the ridiculous, flaming-hair-orange, Bozo-the-Clown rule only we brainout Christians can invent: use one same English word for one Greek word. As for prepositions, despite the correct meaning, you are forced to translate them only one way. So every Bible word is basically constrained to be mistranslated. So, the word "eis" is thus mistranslated, most of the time, as "to" or "into", because you're not allowed to translate it another way. (See Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek Appendix, look up his internet blog, or consult someone who teaches Bible languages at any seminary.)

The rule kills accurate translation; often renders translation foolish and incompetent! You can never accurately translate one language into another that way. Thus are Bible translations condemned to incompetence. What a miracle, that anyone at all believed in Christ, grew spiritually! See the power of God? See the power of 1Jn1:9 to spiritual perspicacity? For even a child could think of naming his sin directly to God. My best friend and I did it as children, though no one taught us to do so...

This Bozo rule was first invented by a dingdong named Aquila, who tried to debunk the Greek LXX (OT) and translate it back into Hebrew to prove it uninspired. His translation was so awful, people laughed at him. Yet we use his rule today, in spite of the fact that seminaries warn this rule is wrong. Of course, any diplomatic translator could explain how countries are ruined, wars begun, by such bad translations.