The Biblical languages are the first great human mediations of God’s Word. With this regard, it is important to remember that the Biblical books were written –in their original editions- in languages of the Nearby Eastern countries and of the old world, languages which died long ago: the Hebrew and the Hellenistic Greek. None of these languages is spoken today the way they appear in the Bible: In Greece they speak modern Greek, while in Israel –the Biblical promised land"- the Hebrew community speaks modern Hebrew and the Palestinian community speaks Arabic. Therefore, the original Biblical languages are very difficult to understand due to the secular distance of the culture and civilisation expressed in them, and, secondly because of the history, full of vicissitudes, undergone by old copies, which had to be kept and transmitted in the course of time.

Another determining moment of mediation, about the Biblical languages, has been –and continues to be in a certain degree- that of the translation. The Bible of the first testament was originally written in Hebrew and then, in remote times, (from the third century B.C.) it was first translated into Greek (the Bible of the 70), then into various Latin versions (the Vetus Latina and the Vulgata), just to remember the most important cases. In more recent times the Bible was translated into modern languages: Italian, English, French etc. Obviously, the translation of images, narrations, myths, codices of law, so very old and far from the modern world becomes an exceedingly binding task, as well as effectively risky.

Due to the above-mentioned things, it is clear that we must absolutely accept something inconceivable and unavoidable: that the word of God passes through an incisive human mediation and that what the believers read as word of God is also a fruit of human minds.

As we enter the Biblical pages, we discover to be in front of another type of mediation: the mediation of the culture in the epoch when the books were written. If we think that they were written during a very vast span of time, which deepens its dawning into the first half of the first millennium B.C. –the most optimistic persons believe that the first texts were written in the VIII century B.C.- and that ends with the texts of the New Testament dated up to half the II century. B.C., we understand the extreme diversity of languages and conceptions which populate the Biblical message globally. For instance: in some books of the First Testament vengeance and the killing of enemies are not only authorised, but they are expressed also as an explicit will of God; in others, instead, God does not answer with vengeance, but rather with forgiveness, more serious sins, such as the killing of the innocent. In the pages of the New testament, Jesus will say something different, asking the person who is slapped on a cheek to present the other one. These messages, so very different among them and apparently contrasting, are the fruit not only of a theological development of the Biblical course, but also of the different conceptions that animated the historical culture of the time. The word of God was born and addressed to human communities of the old world and could not help finding in this circuit signs and conditionings. .

All this is effectively very beautiful and positive: the God of the Bible, in fact, is not a metaphysical entity, or an abstract entity, but a friend of man who comes down from heaven and walks on earth, speaking human languages and lavishing in thousands forms of incarnation: a strategy aiming at meeting the heart and intelligence of man until the Son makes himself symbol and sacrament of this God: the Son of God who, for the sake of love, becomes man.

Entering this vision of the word of God is the condition to free the Bible from every trace of rigidity and unhealthy dogmatism, and to enjoy the freedom of living more phases of the journey of a revelation to be discovered and incarnated, with the gift of Pentecost.

Paul is an unequalled example of mediator of God’s word, understood as Gospel of Christ. Nobody like him –among the protagonists of the New testament- shows us the linguistic, cultural and also existential mediation as an authentic method of evangelisation. Paul denounces and explains it without half terms: "(…) I put myself in slavery to all people, to win as many as I could: I made myself as a Jew to win the Jews; to those under the law as one under the law (though I am not). (…). I made myself weak to win the weak. I accommodated myself to people in all kinds of different situations, so that by all possible means I might bring some to salvation" (1 Cor 9,19-22).

These sublime words open the horizon of Paul’s faith in which the reason and intelligence of his apostolic mission are wide-opened. His mission is realised through a constant translation of the message of joy of life and salvation, namely the Gospel he carries everywhere with himself. This happiness and this life cannot be enjoyed in solitude, therefore Paul needs to share them in order to treasure them up. "All this I do for the sake of the Gospel, that I may share these benefits with others" (1 Cor 9,23).

The sharing requires the efforts of always different "mediations"; a mediation with the Jews, who speak the language of the law and to whom Paul wants to announce the Gospel, starting from a reflection on their Mosaic Law; different, instead, is the mediation, which he uses with the Gentiles, who do not know the Law, thus he needs to enter their vision of the world, to furnish himself with the knowledge and the instruments of their own culture, to the end of dialoguing and discussing with them; Paul considers another type of mediation to be necessary for those who reveal themselves psychologically, economically or humanly weak: in order to embrace the weak Paul will marry the same uneasy condition, will put himself in their clothes, provided he can hear with their very ears a Word apt to arouse hope.

Taken by the wave of these Biblical inspiration, we come, finally, to ask ourselves about the type of mediation of which the believer in his listening becomes author and actor. To set on an honest reflection, we clear off the field of any possible equivocation: "to mediate" does not mean reading the Bible in the television…this is rather a mediatic operation! To speak of an effective meditative activity of the Word of God we need not only to remember what we have said above, but also to add that the subject who mediates is a community and it is in the name of a life experience and of knowledge in communion that we can legitimately do it.

This community lives two types of love and two types of belonging: to heaven and to the earth, to God and to men, kneaded in the journey and in the historical passions: the fruit which matures from the moment it enters the ear, namely the word of God, and when it enters the other, namely the human, intellectual and moral message of humanity, in its historical today.

No other mediation would be possible or believable, if not through the use of these two and of their constant reciprocal provocation and penetration, crossing, distancing, discussing and meeting one another, thus constituting a precious, reciprocal, critical and creative lever. This goes on until it reaches dreamt spaces not of homologation, of conflict, but of prophetic and constructive harmonies for the health of the world.