where's the word "immigrant"?

I am my father’s son.  He read the Encyclopedia Britannica for entertainment, and it stood on a long shelf in his bedroom.  When he was dying, we all clustered around his deathbed, praying and singing for a couple of days.  But prayer and study were tied together in our lives, and we took time to use the encyclopedia in his room.  In fact, as death got closer, perhaps an hour away, two of his children were in the room with him, checking a footnote in the encyclopedia.  So this morning, I bounced out of bed hunting for my Oxford English Dictionary, my beloved OED.  Some barbarian displaced/misplaced and/or failed to replace it during a recent domestic renovation/demolition.

I went to bed last night puzzling about why no one translates “ger” (in Hebrew) or “xenos” (in Greek) in the Bible as “immigrant.”  Nearly every translation of the Bible says “stranger.”  Why?  When I got up, I was on fire with a potential solution.  How old is the word “immigrant”?

And, by God, I was right!  It is a new word, or fairly new as Biblical translations go.  I could not lay my hands on my OED, but the Online Etymology Dictionary says that the word “immigrant” first appeared in America in 1792.  It started as an American English word.  The French, around the same time, were talking about the émigrés, the people who fled France to avoid the guillotine.  Americans needed a new word to talk about the shiploads of new Americans.  It is based on a Latin word (immigrare), so inventing the word was not a great stretch; but the word is pretty new, and it was American at the outset.  So translators did not use the word before the 19^th century -- because it wasn’t a word.

To be sure, there have been translations made since 1792.  But when you are translating into English and already know the beauty and strength of several translations, it is hard to step away from them.  A translator will use words that have worked well previously.  If translators were working with the Hebrew and Greek, without any knowledge of English versions, some would translate the words as “immigrant.”  But they all know the music of the “stranger,” and can be seduced by the music.

Still, I see another reason to stick with the word “stranger” most of the time, even when you know that “immigrant” is a good translation.

The starting point for this word concerns Abraham and his descendants in Egypt, up to Moses – “strangers in a strange land.”  The magic of this phrase is that the word “strange” is used twice, with two different perspectives.  “We were strangers”: that is, in the eyes of the Egyptians, we (Hebrews) were foreigners.  “In a strange land”:  that is, in our (Hebrew) eyes, Egypt was a foreign land.  The phrase reflects the perspective of the Egyptians, and then the perspective of the Hebrews.  You can’t do that with “immigrant.”  You can’t say, “We were immigrants in an immigrant land.”  We were exotics in an exotic land; we were foreigners in a foreign land – those work, but not as well as “stranger” – to my ear.

The equivalence of hosts and guests is an ancient and fascinating issue, and turns out to be a matter of huge importance, it seems to me.

In Greek, the word “xenos” means “stranger,” or “host,” or “guest.”  That it, it refers to people whom you do not know.  When you come in contact with strangers, politeness – that is, the rules of civilization, some civilization, any civilization – requires that you and the stranger deal with each other respectfully.  He is a stranger to you and you are a stranger to him.  The issue of mutual respect overshadows the issue of who is sedentary and who is traveling when the meeting occurs.  What decides who is host and who is guest?  If you are both nomads and you meet at a waterhole, who has been there longer? Does that decide the issue of who is host, who is guest?  Or: who has more food?  Does that decide who is who host, who is guest?  Our language suggests that these are important questions.  Greek does not distinguish between host and guest.

Latin has the same challenge/blessing/difficulty.  The word “hostis” means “stranger” or “host” or “guest.”  When St. Jerome translated the Bible into the language of the common man (that is, Latin, of course), he translated Hebrew “ger” and Greek “xenos” as “hostis.”

In the first five books of the Bible (the Torah, the Pentateuch), Moses deals with the issue of how to treat foreigners with great eloquence and power.  The issue that he deals with has complicated details, but is simple at heart.  There’s US, and there’s THEM: how do we think about them, how do we treat them?  There are some interesting details about behavior, but what Moses comes back to, repeatedly, is simple: remember our experience as strangers, and do not do to THEM what was done to US.  Remember, remember, remember – and sympathize because you remember.  There is an US and there is a THEM, but rule number one about THEM is an appeal to the heart, not a law: remember and sympathize.   Who’s “ger”?  It depends on your perspective. 

It seems to me that this is exactly the same question that Jesus dealt with, and Jesus adopts the same approach as Moses.  The words are a little different, but the question is the same: “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus, like Moses, doesn’t challenge the difference between US and THEM, between neighbor and stranger.  His approach to the question is not to define the line, and list the rules.  Like Moses, he urges sympathy.  He responds with the story of the Good Samaritan.  In that story, what is clear is that the priest and the Levite on the road do not feel obliged to help the man attacked by bandits, because he is not one of US.  The injured man wants US to be a broad category; he needs help from whoever passes by.  The priest and Levite have a clearly defined and somewhat smaller, somewhat more exclusive, US.  The Samaritan has a broader definition of US.  He understands, hears, feels, the appeal from the victim in the road.  In this simple story, Jesus does the same thing that Moses did: he asks his followers to see the question of US versus THEM through the eyes of the person on the other side of the divide.  Moses says, remember what it’s like to be THEM.  Jesus says, don’t define US from the inside, but from the outside, from the perspective of the needy who need the definition to be broad.

If you want to say, the host should be quick to understand the view of the guest, and the guest should be quick to understand the view of the host, it may be simpler to avoid words that define the host/guest relationship.  Remember what’s like to be a stranger in a strange land (says Moses), and let the issue of need define who has a claim on you (says Jesus). 

To summarize: (1) translators have not used the word “immigrant” to translate “ger” or “xenos” because the word is new.  But (2) “stranger” may still be the best translation, because it makes it a little easier to approach the boundary between US and THEM in a balanced fashion, encouraging each side to understand the other side.  (3) The way we treat strangers/immigrants is startlingly significant in the teaching of both Moses and Jesus.