Another passage which sounds strange to our ears, but would have made sense to the original readers is Acts 15:29. In the Arli language, the translators had made a draft that said, “to abstain from food which is intended for idols, from blood and from meat from strangled animals and from fornication”. As modern readers, we might wonder what was wrong with eating an animal that had been strangled. But their are two important points: First, under the Jewish law, the throats of animals had to be cut and the blood drained out before an animal could be eaten; if an animal was only strangled, and not slaughtered, the blood would not have had a chance to drain out. Secondly, strangling and eating an animal was often used as part of pagan idol worship. Thus it makes sense for this to be forbidden since Gentile converts to Christ would need to make a clean break with pagan idol worship which often involved eating a non-slaughtered animal, drinking blood and temple prostitution, thus fornication.

Now, we can’t bring all of that out in a translation (since we are not producing a study Bible with notes). But we did adjust the Arli language draft to say “to abstain from food which is sacrificed to idols, to not drink blood and to not eat meat of strangled animals whose blood was not shed/drained and to not commit fornication”. But making that adjustment to the translation, it makes clearer some of the cultural background which our modern Roma readers would otherwise surely miss.