“Memorial offering” of Cornelius – Acts 10:4

What does it mean in Acts 10:4 when the angel of the Lord tells Cornelius that his prayers and charity to the poor went up as a “memorial offering” before God? Clearly, this is the language of acceptable sacrifice. But what is the significance of this particular kind of offering, a “memorial offering”?

This question came up because a first draft of a translation I am checking in the Arop-Sissano language in Papua New Guinea has it something like this…

“You often pray, and all the things you give to people with nothing, God has seen this and he thinks of you.”

Is that the intended significance of “memorial offering”—that God thinks of (or remembers) the person who has given the offering? Sort of.

The Greek word here is μνημόσυνον mnēmosunon ‘memorial’, something that enables someone to remember. So if the memorial goes up before God, then it makes possible sense that it functions as a memorial for God to remember something about the one who gives the memorial.

But this word was used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew אזכּרה ’azkārâ, the ‘memorial portion’ of the grain offering in Leviticus 2:2, 9, 16; 5:12; 6:15; Numbers 5:26. Driver (Journal of Semitic Studies, 1 [1956], 100) described it this way: “It is the sign whereby the worshipper is reminded or taught that the whole offering is in fact owed to God but that He is pleased to accept only a part of it as a ‘token’ while remitting the burning of the rest of it on the altar so that it may be otherwise consumed.” Thus, Driver puts the focus of the remembering on the worshipper, not on God.

Regardless of whether we think the memorial is more for prompting the worshipper or God to remember something, the particular thing that Driver identifies as the thing to be remembered may be key for understanding the significance of Acts 10:4. The “memorial offering” was only a portion of the grain offering. God was pleased to accept this small portion and allow the rest of the grain offering to be left for the priests to eat even though the whole offering was due him. In Acts 10 it soon becomes apparent that Cornelius and his household function in the story as a representative portion of the Gentiles. Just as the prayers of Cornelius and his charity to the poor arose as the “memorial portion” of an offering before God, Peter recognizes through the grace given to the one man Cornelius that God “accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.”

Thus, in drawing attention to the piety of Cornelius as the ‘memorial portion’ of a worship offering to God, the angel of God anticipates how Cornelius will function later in the episode as a representative of men from all nations who receive grace and peace from God through Jesus Christ.

Refresher Greek Course

I have completed teaching the first week of a 2-week refresher Greek course. I am team-teaching this intensive review of basic Koine Greek morphology and grammar with one other person. We meet from 8am until noon every day, and the mid-course evaluations were overall very positive. We have 12 participants—all Bible translators, translation trainers, and translation consultants—who have not had formal Greek training for anywhere from 7 years ago to 34 years ago. Although we entered this course with a bit of fear and trepidation, knowing that the participants must have a broad range of experience and ability in Greek, we soon learned that everyone felt rusty and were looking forward to whatever they could get out of the course.
We have mostly been using Bill Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek, and we have been following his “Track 2″ for the most part in order to get into verbs sooner. Here is what we covered in the first week…

• Day 1: Introductions, syllabus, Greek alphabet, 1st & 2nd declension nouns, articles, nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative case
• Day 2: Prepositions, present indicative forms of εἰμί, adjectives, 1st & 2nd person personal pronouns, introduction to verbs, present active indicative
• Day 3: Contract verbs, present middle/passive indicative, imperfect indicative
• Day 4 (only met from 10:30 until noon): 3rd declension nouns
• Day 5: forms and uses of αὐτός, demonstratives, relative pronouns, first aorist active, introduction to participles, present participles

We had laid out a tentative schedule that would allow us to get through Mounces entire introductory grammar in 2 weeks, but we affirmed that we would slow down if the pace was too quick. At the end of the first week, we are actually 3 chapters ahead of schedule. This may allow us to get into a few more discourse topics and the use of computer tools during this second and last week of the course.

Jesus Teaches Payback

From my journal on 24 July during advisor checking of Onnele translations in Papua New Guinea…

Chapter 12 has gone pretty slow. There were some pretty major things that needed fixing. For example, in Luke 12:48b… “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” This is in the context of a section about faithful servants, but of course, each Onnele translation made this verse sound like a truism regarding the custom of payback (if people give to
you, you’ll have to give back to them). This applies to gifts, but revenge is also the law of the land. It took a while for the translators to even understand what the difference was, and even then, after they understood it,
they still wanted to translate it almost exactly like they originally had it.

At first, it said (in Onnele, Tok Pisin back translation, and English backtranslation, respectively)…

Nu uma empo nu’pu ompla mingkla, nu ese nane kore ompla mingkla paiyi kore. La mana wongke uma mingklari nane wu ompla mingkla, mana namo nu ese naline wu fa wu ese yali kore ompla mingkla.

Ol man i kisim ol planti samting, ol bai givim bek ol samting planti igo bek. Sapos wanpela man, ol man planti i givim em planti samting, dispela man ol bai askim em long em bai givim ol samting planti bek.

People who receive many things, they will give back many things. If a man–many people have given him many things–this man, they will ask him that he will give many things back.

Now we have something like this:

Nu uma e nu’pu ommo mingklari e bosni, bos ese yali mi kero fa nurune ommo mingklari woneni. Ne mana fina, bos ya’ne ira uporo mingklari, mana namo nu ese nunarine wu mi mimgkla.

Ol manmeri i kisim ol planti samting bilong bos, bos bai givim tok strong bilong lukautim ol planti samting bilong en. Na husat man, bos i givim planti gutpela het, dispela man ol bai askim em long planti tok.

People who receive many things belonging to [their] boss, the boss will give strong talk for him to look after the many things belonging to him. And whatever man, the boss has given [him] much good head [= much knowledge], this man people will ask him about much talk.

This translation makes some things very explicit that are not in the original:

• the identity of the master as the one who gives the work of ‘lukautim’ (looking after, or caring for) as the type of thing that is given (in the first case)
• knowledge as the type of thing that is given (in the second case)

Even though these things are not explicitly expressed in the original, I feel pretty confident that these are the implied meanings that fit within

this context. And if we didn’t put these things in, the translation would definitely mean the wrong thing–something about reciprocal giving of goods that really has nothing to do with faithful stewardship to an authority.

So even though things are going slow, I’m really happy with the kinds of changes that we’re making.