Learned Contentment, Self-Sufficiency, or Sufficiency?, with Dr. Jonathan More: Philippians 4:11

Exegetically Speaking

Dr. Jonathan More, Vice-Principal and Academic Dean at George Whitefield College, Cape Town, South Africa, focuses his research on the intersection between the intellectual world of the New Testament and its Graeco-Roman context. Today’s topic: Translation sometimes poses difficult decisions when there is no single word available to the translator in the receptor language. The NIV translates Phil 4:11 as, “. . . I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” The word “content” (αὐτάρκης) has a sense that is hard to represent with a single English word.