God’s Government

God’s Government

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 โ€œGodโ€™s governmentโ€ would be a good way to translate the New Testament phrase โ€œthe kingdom of God.โ€ I was working through the parables, noticing many where the first impression one gets is that the rendering simply doesnโ€™t 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 โ€œthe government of Godโ€ as a way of rendering โ€œthe kingdom of Godโ€ for modern audiences, and as an attempt to capture the essential points of the phraseโ€™s 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 Jehovahโ€™s 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 โ€œgovernmentโ€ has overlap with the range of meanings of both โ€œkingdomโ€ and โ€œreignโ€ or โ€œrule,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, Iโ€™m 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 โ€“ย 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 oneโ€™s dreamsโ€ฆ?

Slide by Brent Lokker highlighting different translations of Isaiah 9:7
Slide by Brent Lokker highlighting different translations of Isaiah 9:7

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