24 Sam Creve, Mark Janse, Kristoffel Demoen between source and target language admit to use similar formal patterns to render similar meanings, in others different idiomacity obstructs it. In the latter case, the meaningfulness of the formal elements is often low. Yet, when the language form itself is part of the meaning, the transla- tor will have to weigh its importance and its potential priority to the meaning22. There is, however, an intermediate level between macro- and micro-structural level in which formal characteristics of a text appear. It is the level of the continuity of the text, the formal cohesion of its smaller units: the style and the lexical or syntactic peculiarities of the author. Our investigation obviously focuses on the translation of important recurrent words (key words). Lexical repetition is undeniably a formal characteristic of a text. Yet the fact that the same term can occur in different contexts that select and modify its meaning, makes it hard for translators to preserve this formal coherence. We will have a close look at the translation of the two Pauline key words πνεῦμα and σάρξ, shown to be found in different contexts with a broad meaning extension (cfr. §2). Examining twentieth-century English Bible translations23 with re- spect to the translation of the keywords πνεῦμα and σάρξ, we find both differences and similarities. What all translations have in common, not unexpectedly, is that they have searched for an equivalent English form for the terms or the expressions in which they occur. In other words, in the English versions we can identify words or expressions that are the translational equivalents of πνεῦμα and σάρξ. The differences between the concrete translations, however, are very striking. A verse-by-verse comparison of the different versions reveals differences in vocabulary, but that is not our main concern. We want to compare the continuity of that vocabulary throughout the translation. To put it differently, we want to investigate to what extent the lexical repetition in the source text is conserved in the target text. Before discussing specific examples of the translation of πνεῦμα and σάρξ in their different meanings, two terms need to be introduced to describe the general attitude of the Bible translators toward the treatment of key words: concordant translation and interpretative translation24. E.g. word plays, etymogical figures, allusions, metre, rhyme, … 22 We have examined six recent Bible versions: The Bible: Revised Standard Version 23 (1952: RSV); New King James Version (1982: NKJ); New International Version - US (1984: NIV); The New Jerusalem Bible (London 1990: NJB); Revised Webster Bible (1995: RWB); The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version - anglicised text (Oxford 2003: NRSV). The term “interpretative translation” has been introduced by Peter Newmark, Ap- 24 proaches to Translation (Oxford 1981) 35-36. Newmark states that “interpretative transla- tion requires a semantic method of translation combined with a high explanatory power,