Religion: A Sheep Is a Sheep

Among the baffling problems facing missionaries today is how to convey scriptural concepts in the tongues of Stone Age tribes. The experts who were trying to translate the Bible for the Dani tribe in Indonesia were thrown by the verse “All we like sheep have gone astray” (Isaiah 53:6). Reason: most of the Dani had never seen a sheep. “So,” says Linguist David Scoville, “we thought of using a pig as a ‘cultural equivalent.’ ” But then the missionaries had to contend with the succeeding verse, believed by Christians to foreshadow the Crucifixion, describing a lamb that is quietly “led to the slaughter.” The translators decided they could not substitute pig for lamb in that context because pigs make a squealing commotion before they are killed. What to do? Happily, the mission was beginning to introduce sheep for farming. The linguists promoted the program so that all of the villagers could learn about the animals’ passive personality. Only then could the translators call a sheep a sheep.