Subject: Original language of Revelation |
Bible Note: "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 |