You have to see to appreciate

I remember well a friend of mine calling me one Sunday afternoon 20 years ago to discuss a topic he had heard in a Sunday sermon.  The topic moved my friend and changed his understanding of one of Jesus' analogies.  The topic was found in the first two verses of John 15 about pruning grapevines.  The person in the sermon was saying the translations had not translated accurately, that the analogy was not to pruning grapevines, but in lifting them off the ground so that they could produce since they couldn't produce while lying on the ground.

Translation of any language to another is full of explosive mines, so it was credible that perhaps a new understanding of ancient Greek could change a usual translation, especially if new manuscripts had been discovered.  We talked about the topic, but I remember that the conversation didn't end with any kind of definitive answer on the accuracy of the concept of what was happening with the grapevine.

Today another person raised the exact same topic referencing the same author that my friend had called me about 20 years earlier.  It's strange how things keep getting circulated even it's a generation apart.  I've seen ideas being put forth before with how people deal in naming things that are indigenous to their area in sociolinguistic studies.  Outsiders don't do well when they translate without knowing the culture intimately.  I think what happened in this case is that the translators of traditional versions didn't know what was involved growing grapes.  On the other hand, it would appear that the man challenging the traditional concept of pruning didn't allow for or know the number of methods and reasons for trimming, so he overstated his case.

If I were to interpret the first two verses of John, I would use words more adequately depicting the "vinedresser" of verse 1.   The man you hear in the video below is a true "vinedresser."  He is deliberate in his descriptions, a slow-talking, country man who knows from vast experience what he is talking about.  What word or words would you use to describe him?  I'm fairly certain "vinedresser" would not be your choice.  And watching how and why he would trim leaves to make his grapes thrive would not call to mind the word "prune."  It would seem that the person tending the grapes knows how to make grapes grow by properly trimming in the right places at the right times of the growing season, not arbitrarily inspecting branches to yank and tear off the branches without fruit.

A person can watch the video and be able to discern more properly how to translate the two verses.  The cultural overlay of knowing how to grow grapes does help in knowing what Jesus said more than the just the words, more than attitudes of the listeners, and more than a narrow way of seeing how to trim grapevines.

The point of the analogy is probably not getting rid of those who don't bear fruit, nor is it in helping those who need lifting from the ground so that they can't grow fruit.  It has something to do with a holistic view of stimulating healthy, growing vines, like trimming leaves for sunlight, trimming clusters for large grapes, and trimming a certain number of stems so as to nurture the branches deriving from a main, or true vine, as a whole, which is the summary of the analogy found in verse 8.