Having looked into the person who made this translation possible, I have come to learn the “secret knowledge” that is embedded in The Passion Translation. Most of this post is a transcript of a video clip of the conception of TPT which can be seen here.
I dub it the “Humna Humna Translation” since the main pitch is it’s all about the Homonyms.
The Secret according to Brian Simmons:
“Hebrew is a homonymic language. Let me help you with this. English has a lot of homonyms like a sea. Sea can be an ocean. It can be vision- we see or it can be the letter (C), so three things totally unrelated, disconnected, have no correlation except for the phonetic sound, see. That’s a homonym. Virtually every word in Hebrew is a homonym…
“The word for kiss is nashaq, but nashaq is a homonym. It has another meaning. It’s literally the word “to be equipped for battle.” As a man, this helps me. I mean “Let him kiss me.” That’s hard. Just pray that say that, but “Let him give me weapons.” Yeah, I like that. Let him equip me for battle. What if it’s the kiss that really equips you for Last days warfare that until you’re a lover, you cannot be a fighter in the kingdom of God?”
……
“If we do not have a love-based theology, we’re left with guilt. We’re left with a guilt driven theology that exhort our way into maturity which doesn’t happen because the human heart shuts down when the angry exhortation pounding the pulpit, the guilt motivation that will prompt short-term behavioral change, but it leaves as aftertaste in the soul. It does not bring true maturity. Jesus puts a crown on your head and watches you grow up to fit it. He waits, He watches, He matures, He kisses us so to speak. He affirms and overwhelms us…”
While his opinion exhibits consideration for the wayward believer, it is not the “guilt motivation” of what he deems to be “the angry exhortation pounding the pulpit” that drives people away. Since we are truly living in the last days, we are forewarned that people WILL indeed depart from sound doctrine for plain rebellion.
“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”
2 Timothy 4:3
Going back to his preferred meaning of a text somewhere in the Song of Songs, “‘Let him give me weapons.’ Yeah, I like that.” This is a clear example of inserting one’s own desire into the text, which is namely what’s known as eisegesis. To make a “homonymic” pun with eisegesis, he’s doing “I see Jesus” the way he wants to see God’s Word. If Mr. Simmons could change the meaning of a passage to suit his own desire, this methodology is automatically applied all throughout The Passion Translation. You are not reading the Bible. You are reading some guy’s relative truth.
“What if it’s the kiss that really equips you for Last days warfare that until you’re a lover, you cannot be a fighter in the kingdom of God?” – Relative truth is NOT The Truth. ‘What ifs’ fall into hearsay theology.
The adversary’s goal with this translation is not for clarification, but to change the message of the text entirely. It is to bring more confusion into the body of believers. For this, TPT which in this case stands for this paraphrase translator, is the very person we are warned to avoid,
“If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, 4 he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, 5 useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself.”
1 Timothy 6:3-5
As he carries on to another homonym,
“Did I tell you nashaq has another meaning besides kiss and equip? It is a play on word. It is also the three-letter root of every Hebrew word depending on the vowels you put in it. Nashaq also is the word “to take a drink of wine” Yep! And baptist translators are not going to put that one in there.”
“Yep! And baptist translators are not going to put that one in there.” – The man is introducing evil suspicions toward the committee of Bible translators prior to himself who have devoted their lives into the faithful rendering of the Word of God as he implies his translation is one you can trust.
“Do not add to His words,
Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar.”
Proverbs 30:6
If you are using The Passion Translation as your main translation, you are NOT reading God’s Word.
BEWARE!
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