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When the Salt Lost its Savour: A Brief History of Matthew 5.13/Mark 9.50/Luke 14.34 in English Translation

"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?" Mt 5.13 is arguably one of the best-known sayings attributed to Jesus, and among English speakers, surely the Authorized Version's translation of Mt 5.13 (cited above) remains the most familiar rendering of that verse, despite the multiplication of English translations in the 20th century. Similar (though not verbatim) sayings also appear in Mark and Luke. In the Authorized Version, they read: "Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it?" (Mk 9.50) "Salt is good: but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned?" (Lk 14.34)1 With the appearance of the Revised Standard Version in 1946, the word "savour" was replaced with "taste" (in both Mt5.13 and Lk 14.34), a translation that was continued with the appearance in 1989 of the New Revised Standard Version. This essay traces the first appearances of"savour" (and its Latin and Middle English equivalents) in translations of Mt 5.13/Mk 9.50/Lk 14.34 prior to the Authorized Version, as well as its disappearance from modem English translations of those texts.2 In so doing, we attempt to chronicle the rise and fall in popularity of the word "savour" in these texts having to do with salt, and thus preserve the moment when, in the history of English translations of the Bible, the salt did, indeed, lose its savour! One problem facing translators ofMt 5.13 (and Lk 14.34) is the presence of the word !J.wpaLvw translated in the Authorized Version as "lose its savour" (see Table 1). Throughout Greek literature, the word means "to make foolish," and, as I. Howard Marshall has observed, "no other meaning is attested."3 This is certainly true of the two other occurrences of the word in the New Testament: "Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish (E!J.wpavEv) the wisdom of the world?" (lCor 1.20); "Claiming to be wise, they became fools (E!J.wpav8noav);" (Rom 1.22). This meaning, "make foolish," is found consistently in Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures (cf 2Sam 24.10; Is 19.11; Jer 10.14; 28.17), the OT Apocrypha (Sirach 23.14), and secular Greek texts.' The unusual usage in Mt 5.13 and Lk 14.34 may account for the Vulgate's rendering of the term as euanuesco "vanish" (see Table 1). Scholars have attempted to resolve the notorious difficulties associated with