An Examination for the Translation of the Weak and the Strong in Romans 14:1-2; 15:1

The present article suggests a reassessment of the translation of 'the weak and the strong in faith' in Romans 14:1 and 15:1. The Greek word πίστις does not mean faith exclusively but is employed in different contexts to indicate various meanings such as faithfulness, confidence, pledge, and loyalty. Most of the English and Korean translations, however, render πίστις in Romans 14:1 into faith. Considering that Romans 14 and 15 concern the conflict between Jewish Christians and ex-pagan Christians, such translation may cause the misrepresentation that Jewish Christians have a weaker faith in God but a stronger faith in God, on the other hand, the ex-pagan Christians have. In this line of thought, this paper reconsiders the translation of πίστις by investigating semantics, syntactic patterns, and the context of πίστις. The current research then proposes that πίστις ought to be rendered into 'confidence' rather than 'faith' in Romans 14:1, and as 'we, who are able [to eat]' instead of 'we, the strong in faith' in Romans 15:1. Such alternative translation is based on the collocation and syntactic analysis of πίστις and δυνατός, and it helps to avoid the fallacy caused by the mechanical translation from one linguistic sign to another.