Whoever does not hate his father and mother

1. A large crowd of people was walking  with Jesus, when  he turned  to them and said, “If anyone comes to me but does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not want to take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Therefore, anyone among you who does not renounce everything he has cannot be my disciple. (Lk. 14:25-27, 33)

2. He  who loves his father or mother  more than me is not worthy of me; he who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Mt. 10:37)

3. Although very rare, certain words spoken by Christ make such a strange contrast that one instinctively rejects their literal meaning, and the sublimity of his doctrine does not suffer any harm because of it. Written after his death – none of the Gospels were written during his lifetime – one may be led to believe that, in this case, the depth of his thought was not well expressed, or, what is no less probable, the original meaning may have suffered an alteration in passing from one language to another. It is enough for an error to be committed just once for it to be repeated in subsequent copies, as is seen so often regarding historical facts.

The word hate in this verse from Luke: “If anyone  comes to me and does not hate his father and mother,” is such a case; no one would even think of attributing it to Jesus, so it would be pointless to argue about it and even less to seek to justify it. One would first have to know if he did in fact state it, and if so, one would have to determine if, in the language in which he expressed himself, this word had the same meaning as in ours. In this verse from John, “He who hates his life in this world will save it for eternal life,” it is certain that it does not express the idea we attach to it.

The Hebrew language was not rich and contained many words with several connotations. One example of this is the word in Genesis that designates the phases of creation, and which also served to express a given period of time and the diurnal rotation; hence its later translation using the word day, and the belief that the world had been the work of six times twenty-four hours. The same applies to the word that meant either camel or rope (ropes were made from camel hair), and which was translated as camel in the allegory of the eye of a needle.

Moreover, one must  take into  account the  customs and character of peoples, which influence the particular meaning of their languages. Without this understanding, the true meaning of certain words is lost. From one language to another, the same term can assume different degrees of strength; it might be an insult or a blasphemy in one language but insignificant in another, depending on the idea attributed to it. Even in the same language, certain words lose their significance over time. That is why a strictly literal translation does not always express a thought precisely, and in order to be exact, one must sometimes use equivalents or paraphrases rather than cognates. These remarks find a special application in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, and the Gospels in particular. If one does not take into account the environment in which Jesus lived, one is exposed to errors regarding the significance  of certain expressions  and certain events due to the habit of comparing others to oneself. Therefore, one must rid the term hate of its modern acceptation as contrary to the spirit of Jesus’ teaching.