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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Original language of Revelation | Revelation | Makarios | 10749 | ||
"Several scholars believe Revelation to have been originally written in Aramaic. Here's a few references on that issue. A SEMITIC APROACH TO THE TEXT OF REVELATION by James Scott Trimm containing TWO books published as one together... The Original Language of the Apocalypse by Robert B. Y. Scott, The Language and Date of the Apocalypse by Charles Cutler Torrey, The Apocalypse of St. John in a Syriac Version by John Gwynn The Greek version of Revelation is hard to defend as the inspired original text, in that it has an enourmous number of errors that don't appear in the Aramaic versions. ERRORS ONLY IN THE GREEK VERSION OF REVELATION (and other translational evidence) Charles Cutler Torrey gives ten examples of improper Greek grammar in the Greek version of Revelations as listed below... Rev. 1:4 "Grace to you, and peace, from he who is and who was and who is to come" (all nom. case) Rev. 1:15 "His legs were like burnished brass (neut. gender dative case) as in a furnace purified" (Fem. gender sing. no., gen. case) Rev. 11:3 "My witness (nom.) shall prophesy for many days clothed (accus.) in sackcloth." Rev. 14:14 "I saw on the cloud one seated like unto a Son of Man (accus.) having (nom.) upon his head a golden crown." Rev. 14:19 "He harvested the vintage of the earth, and cast it into the winepress (fem), the great [winepress] (masc.) of the wrath of God." Rev. 17:4 "A golden cup filled with abominations (gen.) and with unclean things" (accus.) Rev. 19:20 "The lake of blazing (fem.) fire (neut.). Rev. 20:2 "And he seized the dragon (accus.), the old serpent (nom.) who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him." Rev. 21:9 "Seven angels holding seven bowls (accus.) filled (gen.) with the seven last plagues." Rev. 22:5 "They have no need of lamplight (gen.) nor of sunlight (accus.)." Now did God inspire John to write in Greek with all those errors, or did John write in the language he knew best (Aramaic) followed by a less than perfect translation into Greek? The Aramaic version of Revelation does not have these "bad grammar" problems. The errors in the Greek text are at least one reason many scholars believe in an Aramaic origin to the book. There are other reasons involving style and how the Greek text tends to use phrasing that is closer to typical Aramaic phrasing than typical Greek phrasing, but this is a difficult thing to demonstrate in a short post like this. One thing that always struck me as odd about the Greek version of Revelations is why it calls him the ""Alpha" and the "O"". That is the word "Alpha" is spelled out but "Omega" is not - it just has the letter Omega there. I always thought it was strange until I read the Aramaic version for the first time, and then the answer became crystal clear. In the Aramaic version, it says "I am the Aleph and the Tau", spelling out both the first and last letter of the alphabet. Thus, there is no inconsistancy about how these two letters are referenced. However, In Aramaic, the "Tau" is written with a Tau and a Waw. The shape of a Waw follows the outline of the near side of a Tau so closely in the square Aramaic lettering, that if they were handwritten close enough, one could easily mistake a Tau and a Waw for a fat Tau, and thus translate the Aramaic "Tau" into Greek with a single letter (O - Omega) to try to render the same "sense". There are two Aramaic versions of Revelation. 1. Peshitta - There's the one that appears in the Peshitta / Peshitto and canonized by the portions of the Eastern Church of Syria (though it had been in circulation before that time). They cannonized the first 22 books of the Bible early, but did not cannonize Revelation and the other of the last 5 books of the New Testament until 508 AD. 2. The Crawford Manuscript of Revelation is published in the last book mentioned above. Does it matter? Well, each language tells the gospel story of Jesus's death, resurrection, atonement, etc., more or less the same way. It's really the more minor issues that differences could be drawn. Because the grammar is different, one might get different hint or clues as to the timing of the rapture in reading different manuscripts. So for end times hints, maybe correctly understanding the right source text might matter to some degree. But most importantly IT MATTERS IN ORDER TO DEFEND THE INTEGRITY OF THE SCRIPTURES, since the Greek version is filled with bad grammar but the Aramaic version is rather clean." Part 1 of 2 |
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2 | Original language of Revelation | Revelation | Makarios | 10750 | ||
"Here's a few differences in how the Greek and Aramaic versions of Revelation read: Rev 2:22 "I will cast her into the COFFIN." The original Aramaic word here is spelled Ayin, Resh Sammekh Alef and can be translated as either "coffin" or "bed". "Bed" appears in the Greek text, but perhaps "coffin" makes more sense. Why would he throw her on a bed with her companions? Note Rev 2:23 says "I will kill her sons..." Why would God's judgement be to kill her sons and not kill her...but just throw her on a bed? Beds are where nice things happen - rest, relaxation....this is clearly a judgement, not a free pass to a spa. It's also easy to see how this could have been translated from Aramaic to Greek the way it was. Rev 10:1 Greek - "and His FEET were like pillars of fire" Aramaic - "and His LEGS were like pillars of fire". The Aramaic word for "legs" here can mean legs or feet or both. But since they are compared to "pillars", "legs" is probably a better translations. So we see how the imagery of the Aramaic version makes more sense. Rev 1:15 strongly suggests an Aramaic origin to Revelation: Greek - "...And his feet were were like brass (calko) burnished (libano) as if in a furnace, glowing/afire." Now the KJV translates "libano" as "burnished", but the word has no real meaning in Greek. It's actually a Hebrew/Aramaic word. Aramaic has two possible translations... "...And his feet were in the form of the Lebanese brass that is burned in a furnace" "...And his feet were in the form of the whitening brass that is burned in a furnace" The first is the most common, while the second is an arguably possible translation. When brass is burned in a furnace, it turns white. "Lebanon" in Hebrew/Aramaic shares roots with the Hebrew word for "to make white". It could be saying the brass is from Lebanon or it could be using this to say the brass is turning white. The same descrepency also appears in Rev 2:18. The Greek text is definitely using a Hebrew/Aramaic word - no question about it. A Hebrew/Aramaic word just simply suddenly appears in the middle of this otherwise Greek sentence. It would appear that when Revelation was translated from Aramaic to Greek, they simply transliterated this word instead of finding a Greek equivalent. Perhaps the translators did not know what it meant, so they just transliterated it. One problem with Aramaic is that it is a rather fluid language with several dialects, and the Greek traslators may not have known the dialect they were translating from, but only had info on a close, but not identical dialect of Aramaic. Rev 9:11 Aramaic - "...whose name in Hebrew is 'Avadu' and in Aramaic 'Sh'ra'" Greek - "...whose name in Hebrew is 'Abaddon' and in Greek 'Apollyon'" Rev 8:2 says the angels were given 7 Shofars -indicating what type of trumpet it was. The Torah discusses the Shofar made from a Ram's horn as well as silver trumpets. These two types of trumpets were used for different purposes in different times. So the fact that the Aramaic text could be telling us what kind of trumpet this was is significant in that this is lost in the Greek version. Now there's other subtleties that come through in the Aramaic that don't come through in the Greek. For example, when Jesus said He was the "Alef and the Tau", there's something hinted here that doesn't come through by translating this as "Alpha and Omega" or "A and the Z". Alef and Tau spell the word "ET" in Hebrew, which has an important grammatical usage that parallels Jesus's atonement in a spiritual way. Genesis 1:1 says... "In the beginning God created it; the heavens and the earth" This is probably the most literal way you could translate "ET". "ET" here is translated as the word "it". When an indirect object appears in a Hebrew sentence, it has to be preceeded by the word "ET", spelled Alef Tau. So it takes the place of an indirect object and must come before it. Now just as "ET" takes the place of an indirect object, Jesus took our place on the cross, and He had to come before us! Praise Him forevermore!!!!" part 2 of 2 (Taken from a thesis of the authorship of Revelation from my friend who is a Messianic Jew) |
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3 | Original language of Revelation | Revelation | djconklin | 31880 | ||
Is there anyway to get a complete copy of the thesis? BTW, there is no doubt that Jesus and John would not or could not have known koine Greek and thus it is highly possible that Jesus did say that He was the alpha and the omega. I'll read the rest after I have had some sleep! |
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4 | Original language of Revelation | Revelation | Makarios | 31881 | ||
Yes, there is a way- but I'll have to find the webpage, which was the source of all of that material that I posted back in July.. Shame on me for not citing it in the post back then! As soon as I find it, I will send it on to you. | ||||||
5 | Original language of Revelation | Revelation | djconklin | 31926 | ||
Thanks! I look forward to seeing it! | ||||||