Exegeting Emotions in the Bible for Translation: Toward a Comprehensive Method

Emotions are critical for human cognition and decision-making, impacting memory and interactions. In Bible translations, capturing emotions is essential for effective communication (Larson 1998). The Forum of Bible Agencies International recognizes this, having included emotion as their 2nd core translation principle since 2006.

Emotions appear at all linguistic levels: phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, discursive, and in conceptual metaphors. Despite their prevalence, few translation resources systematically focus on emotions, leaving translators without adequate resources or methodology for translating them.

Translators and other gospel communicators need materials that help them communicate the emotions in the Bible adequately. These materials prove crucial for oral and sign language translators, whose audiences subconsciously interpret the entire passage through the emotions they perceive in the performance. Faithfulness to the biblical text requires identifying and translating emotions, yet verifying the correct identification of those emotions remains elusive.

This paper incorporates ideas from the most recent and widely accepted research on emotions to outline a basic framework for exegeting emotions within biblical texts for translation. The paper introduces the study of emotions, focuses on the interplay between emotions and society, and surveys how emotions appear in language. Building on these theoretical foundations, the paper introduces a simple process for identifying emotions in the biblical texts. The paper concludes with direction for further research.