An original Hebrew word might have many shades of meaning, and the Greek translator usually could convey only one sense of the Hebrew word. However, because the standard translation became fixed, Greek translators often employed it even when the Hebrew word it translated appeared with an obviously different meaning.

Due largely to the influence of the Septuagint, the second-century B.C. Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, many Hebrew words came to have a fixed translation in Greek. δῆσαι and λῦσαι, for instance, the Greek verbs used in Matthew 16:19, are the standard translations in the Septuagint for the Hebrew words אסר (asar, bind) and התיר (hitir, loose).

Such a method of translating is a blessing in disguise for modern scholars trying to recover a Hebrew text, which has survived only in Greek translation. It somewhat simplifies the process of putting the Greek back into Hebrew. But this literal translating is anything but a blessing for the unfortunate English reader who must struggle with Hebraisms such as “bind” and “loose,” not realizing that in addition to their literal Hebrew meanings, these words can mean “forbid” and “permit.”

When the Greek translator of the original Hebrew Life of Jesus translated the Hebrew words asar and hitir literally into Greek, he was employing the traditional method of translation. Almost 1,600 years later, the translators commissioned by King James, generally still using the word-for

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