We live in an era where language barriers are a thing of the past. Tools like Google Translate can bridge the gap between over 200 modern languages at the click of a button. Allowing us to communicate across the world in real time without having to learn a new language or travel outside our home.
But when we point this translation technology at ancient religious texts like the Bible, we hit a brick wall. Even with the most accurate “word-for-word” translations, something vital goes missing.
We get the facts, but we lose the meaning. We get the information but we lose the transformation. Why? This is because we have been trained to read for information while the ancient world wrote for participation and transformation.
The Trap of the “Propositional” lens or why literalism leads to idolatry
Modern translation often focuses on what John Vervaeke calls Propositional and Procedural knowledge—the “knowing that” and ‘knowing how“. We want to know exactly what was said or done so treat the Bible like a history book or a scientific instruction manual.
But ancient languages like Hebrew and Aramaic weren’t built to just share sterile data. They were built for Perspectival and Participatory knowing. They weren’t just trying to describe the world but they were trying to change the person reading the text.
The Midrashic Solution: Wrestling with the Gaps
The Jewish tradition of Midrash offers us a different way forward. Midrash is the process of translating the words of a prophet into your own living experience. It assumes that the “truth” isn’t just in the ink on the page (the black fire), but in the spaces between the words (the white fire).
To read Midrashically is to move from being a spectator to a participant and wrestle with the text. It asks: How does this ancient story “grip” my current life?
The Torah was given as black fire on white fire
Let’s look at what this could look like by translating Psalm 23 using the Midrash method.
Psalm 23: A Participatory Translation
The Infinite is my Shepherd; I am no longer a fragmented seeker. He settles me into the quiet rhythms of the earth; He guides me toward the stillness where the self is restored. He recalibrates my internal compass, Aligning my path with the resonance of what is True.
Even when the path descends into the throat of deep shadow, I am not gripped by the fear of being undone. For You are not an object of my thought, but the environment of my being; Your boundaries and Your support—they give me a spine.
You prepare a feast for me in the very presence of my anxieties; You drench my head in the oil of purpose; My cup is a flood, spilling over the edges of my own life.
Fierce Beauty and Relentless Love will hunt me down Every single day that I breathe; And I will find my home within the Pulse of the Infinite, Until time and I are one.
Retuning our perception
Take a look at how a shift in translation changes our “Optimal Grip” on reality:
- The Familiar: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalm 23:1)
- The Participatory: “The Infinite is my Shepherd; I am no longer a fragmented seeker.”
The first is a comforting fact. The second is a recalibration of attention. It moves the text from a “claim” about God to an “experience” of wholeness.
The Right Hemisphere and the Power of Myth
As Iain McGilchrist argues in The Matter with Things, our modern world is dominated by the Left Hemisphere of the brain—the part that loves literalism, labels, and plain language. But the “sacred” lives in the Right Hemisphere, the domain of metaphor, myth, and the implied.
When we translate ancient texts into “plain English,” we often pull the wings off the butterfly to see how it flies. We understand the parts, but the “flight” or the transformative power is gone.
How to “inhabit” the text
If you want to move beyond being “lost in translation,” you have to change your lens and how you approach the text.
- Stop looking for “Data”: Start looking for Resonance.
- Embrace the Strange: Don’t “clean up” the weird parts of the Bible; those gaps are exactly where the Midrashic work begins.
- Translate it for your “Arena”: If the Psalmist were writing about your challenges and anxieties today, what words would they use?
We don’t read the Bible to know more about the ancient world. We read it to see our own world with a “singular eye”—focused, undivided, and flooded with light.
I am not an expert in ancient languages or the mechanics of Midrash. But what I’ve learned is this: we lose the “breath” of the text when we spend our energy arguing over the literal meaning of words while forgetting how to actually inhabit them. The point isn’t to master the text, but to let the text master our attention—moving us from a debate about facts to a practice of being.
How to engage the text for transformation and not just information
Further reading
Created using Google Deep Research.
Exodus 