Simple language
During Yearly Meeting (YM) 2025 we heard the following passage from Matthew’s gospel read several times: ‘See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves’ (10:16). So it feels right that it is rendered in the Epistle.
I note that most Meetings (certainly up our way) use the translation I’ve used here – the New Revised Standard Version. But this translation may trip Friends up if they are not from a Bible-handling tradition. To this end, I’d like to offer a few quick notes.
First, the paragraphing of chapters and sections in the New Testament are the result of modern editorial choices. Some versions have the ‘serpents and doves’ passage rendered at the end of the paragraph, followed by a new section header (‘Coming persecutions’). This is then followed by verses 17-23, which served to prepare the church for persecution (‘you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake’, and so-forth). Other translations, however, begin the paragraph on church persecution with the ‘serpents and doves’ saying. In the original Greek there is no such paragraphing or subtitling – the text is continuous.
It follows, then, that no matter the paragraphing in your particular translation, it is highly likely that the author intends us to read the ‘serpents and doves’ passage in the context of the persecution of the church that follows directly thereafter. This is tacitly attested to by the translation of akeraios to ‘innocent’. Indeed, the use of this word bears witness to the legalistic context of the following section. More literally, however, akeraios means ‘unmixed’ or ‘pure’, so a rendering of ‘simple’, rather than ‘innocent’, would be appropriate, if not better.
We know that ‘innocence’ as a concept is contestable. Is a soldier under the duress of their orders innocent? Simplicity is a less contestable concept (see, for example ‘We do utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fighting with outward weapons’).
I would like to suggest, then, that ‘wise as serpents and simple as doves’ is the most accurate translation – and the most Quakerly, too.
Jo Baynham
Seeing patterns
I was dismayed and shocked to read in the report of Yearly Meeting (13 June) that the clerk had to warn Friends to ‘be kind to staff’. How can we justify our concept of looking for that of God in everyone if we are unkind to those who are working to help us?
The solidity of a chain is dependent on the strength of the weakest link. Each of us has to think deeply about how we react to people. Remember George Fox: ‘Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations… that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.’
Margaret Sadler
