It seems that I have reached the point in my life where I am doing scholarship even in my sleep. A few nights ago I had a dream in which I was looking into the possibility that โGodโs governmentโ would be a good way to translate the New Testament phrase โthe kingdom of God.โ I was working through the parables, noticing many where the first impression one gets is that the rendering simply doesnโt fit, and then discovering that on closer inspection it just might work.
I suppose, after this experience, I have two questions. The first is what you think of โthe government of Godโ as a way of rendering โthe kingdom of Godโ for modern audiences, and as an attempt to capture the essential points of the phraseโs meaning in Jesusโ time. Poking around just a little on line (after waking up from the dream), it seems to be a renderingย that some religious groups like (such as the Jehovahโs Witnesses), but I did not find much scholarly discussion of the concept. It does seem to me worth discussing โ if only to bring into focus the ways that such a rendering is inadequate, and thus to highlight the differences between modern governments and ancient kingdoms for modern readers. But given that โgovernmentโ has overlap with the range of meanings of both โkingdomโ and โreignโ or โrule,โ and given that the latter two words have been proposed as alternatives to the former as renderings in English of the Aramaic word that Jesus would have used, Iโm not sure that my dreamย would have been better spent doing something else.
The second question is whether anyone else hasย ever practiced their profession in theirย sleepย โย or is this a sign of how much I love what I do, since engaging in hobbies, like music or sports, is not uncommon in oneโs dreamsโฆ?
