Translating Revelation 1 consistently

1    A revelation of Jesus Christ, 
      that the God gave to Him, to show to His slaves 
      what is necessary to happen with suddenness;
      and that He signified,
      having messaged through His angel to His slave John, 

2   who witnessed the word of the God,
      and the witness of Jesus Christ—the things he saw.

3    "Blessed is the one reading
     and they who are hearing the words of the prophecy
     and keeping the writings in it,
     for the time is near."

4  "John, to the seven churches in the Asia:
      Grace be to you, and peace, 
      from the One who is, and who was, and who is coming, 
      and from the seven Spirits that are before His throne, 

5   and from Jesus Christ,
      the Witness, the Faithful, 
      the First Born from the dead, 
      and the Ruler of the kings of the Earth.
      To Him who loves us, and loosed us
      from the sins of ours by the blood of His,  

6   and made us a kingdom 
      and priests to the God and His Father,  
      to Him be the glory and the dominion, 
      unto the ages of the ages, amen.

7   Look! 

      He comes with the clouds 

      and every eye will see Him, 

      also they who pierced Him, 

      and they will beat themselves over Him

      —all the tribes of the earth; yes, amen." (CFB)             

             
            
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Brief comments:
Many translations create inconsistencies, by for example purporting that the Revelation is of things that are to happen soon (rather than suddenly). Similarly, many translations render doulos as "servant": but this can be misleading (by weakening the obligation of obedience of the Christian to Christ), and when the New Testament seeks that sense, i.e. servant rather than slave, the term used is diakonos (cp. Matthew 23:11)

CFB: Scripture quoted from the Christ Family Bible. Copyright © 2017 by J.J. Thomas. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

God's very best possible, wonderful announcement

Christ Jesus died innocently a torturous death on a cross, to pay the required ransom for each and every human being to be set free from slavery to the devil (which is the natural condition for everyone born on earth). 

Is this true? Yes. For proof, check out the countless testimonies of people who were precisely set free from sin-slavery when they accepted Christ Jesus as their lord. For example: 
      I am one of them. 
      Another is evangelist Steve Hill, formerly a hard-drug addict. 
      A brave Scotsman whose manslaughtering alcoholism evaporated.

Christ lives and governs Heaven and Earth to lead people who call Jesus Lord, through this world and into eternal life. 

      "And having been perfected He became, 

      to all who are obeying Him, 

      responsible for eternal salvation..." 

                        (Hebrews 5:9, CFB) 

      "But gratitude be to God,

      because you were slaves of the sin,

      yet you obeyed from heart

      unto that to which you were delivered,
      that form of teaching.

      Then, having been liberated from the sin,

      you were enslaved to the righteousness." 

                        (Romans 6:17-18, CFB) 

      "All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to Me.

      Going, therefore, disciple all the nations,

      baptizing them

      in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 

      teaching them to keep all that I have commanded you." 

                        (Matthew 28:18b-20a, CFB) 

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CFB: Scripture quoted from the Christ Family Bible. Copyright © 2017 by J.J. Thomas. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Reading Philippians 2 consistently

19 Yet I hope, by the Lord Jesus, to send Timothy to you soon, so that also I be cheered in soul, with knowing the things concerning you.

20 Indeed, I have no one equal in soul, anyone who by origin will concern himself with the things concerning you. 

21 Indeed, all people seek the things of themselves (not the things of Jesus Christ)!

22 Yet the worth of him you know, because, like a child for a father, he served together with me unto the wonderful announcement [tò euangèlion]. (CFB)

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Brief comments:

Many modern translations of these verses create conflicts, or inconsistencies, within this text by Paul:

(a) They translate Paul as though he says that he has no one like Timothy who will genuinely care about the Philippians.

(b) They translate as though Paul is criticising the people around him for seeking only the things of their own and not the things of Christ.

But Paul closes his letter by sending greetings to the Philippians from the Christian siblings who are with Paul. Would Paul speak so harshly about his brothers and sisters at all? And then send greetings from them?

Furthermore, according to tradition (cp. KJV), this letter was drafted by St. Epaphroditus, who Paul would then have been sending alongside Timothy. If that tradition is correct, then translating with (a) and (b) creates infelicity, conflicts, inconsistencies.

Investigating the Ancient-Greek text enables a translation that does not conflict with the rest of The Letter to the Philippians, because the text is quite different than what many modern translations depict. It appears very likely that Paul is not speaking insultingly about anyone, but rather remarking that Timothy, as a Greek, will care by origin ("naturally" in the KJV) for the Greeks of Philippi, and wryly adding that after all everyone seeks the (good) for their own (people). This letter is written in Rome rather than in a Greek region: thus "I have no one like-souled who will by nature take care for the things of you (Greeks)".

(c) Many translations create a conflict by making it sound as though Paul is calling himself Timothy's (spiritual) father; this conflicts with Christ Jesus's commandment to call no father on earth one's own father (Matthew 23:9). In such a way, Philippians 2:22 works alongside mistranslations of 1 Corinthians 4:15, Ephesians 6:4, Colossians 3:21, and Philemon 10, to cause Christians to start calling others than their Heavenly Father "father", in conflict with Christ's commandment. (Bible translators unfortunately often add the word “father” to St. Paul’s self-descriptions in 1 Corinthians 4:15 and in Philemon 10, or in Ephesians 6:4 and Colossians 3:21 translate hoi pateres as “fathers”, rather than “parents”, which parallelism in the context, and general knowledge, both prefer.)

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CFB: Scripture quoted from the Christ Family Bible. Copyright © 2017 by J.J. Thomas. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The disastrous return of the many fathers and guides system

God, the Lord Christ Jesus, commanded disciples,

"But you, do not be called 'rabbi' ['my master', 'my teacher'], 
      for one is your guide, and you are all siblings. 
And a father do not call yours on the earth, 
      for one is yours, the Father of Heaven. 
Neither be called 'guides', 
      for your guide is one, the Christ,
      and the greatest among you will be your servant; 
      and whoever will exalt himself will be lowered, 
      and whoever will lower himself will be exalted." 
                                                      (Matthew 23:8-12, CFB)


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CFB: Scripture quoted from the Christ Family Bible. Copyright © 2017 by J.J. Thomas. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Vital theories from God's Word: The One Author Theory and the One Ruler Theory

Update: I no longer agree much with this text. For the reasons, please see my articles on the ongoing power of Babylon and the Beasts of Revelation (at christrescues.substack.com), and my Translator's Preface to The Christ Family Bible.

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If one reads the whole Holy Bible (all 77 books), or at least all the 27 books of the New Testament, two central theories or "ways of seeing reality" (the meaning of the word theory) are clear:

The One Ruler Theory
After Christ's death and resurrection, all authority on earth and in heaven is unified. There is one governor now. (Previously, there were two main rulers: God and "the prince of this world", the Devil.)

The One Author Theory
The Holy Bible has one author, God's Holy Spirit. (That's not to say that every word in the surviving manuscripts is authentic.)

As a Bible translator and interpreter, I have found that the One Author Theory has been wonderfully fruitful in "seeing" excellent, perfect solutions to translation problems. My hope, in proposing the One Ruler Theory for consideration, is that it will enjoy similar fruitfulness for people who consider it seriously.

Reading the Holy Bible sympathetically

Update: I would like to question the texts now highlighted in yellow. For more on how one might question those texts, please see my Translator's Preface to The Christ Family Bible.

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Ruining any text is quite easy by reading it unsympathetically. This is generally confirmed by the language sciences: Pragmatics, for example, claims that linguistic underdetermination is usual, meaning that texts require sympathy, taking the form of agreement between writer and reader about principles of logic, coherence, intention, etc. H.P. (Paul) Grice formulated these agreements as a set of categories of maxims that writer and reader need to agree to, in order for the text to deliver successfully the intended message. [1]

What agreements do Bible readers need? What maxims does the author require agreement to? 

Having read the Holy Bible for many years, and studied it in scientific-academic disciplines for around 7 years, I propose that sympathetic reading of the Holy Bible involves these maxims:

(1) The Holy Bible has one author, the Holy Spirit. 

(2) Christ Jesus provides the core concepts that enable disambiguation and authentification of all other Biblical texts.

(3) God, the Holy Spirit, the author of the Holy Bible, speaks with perfect consistency and truth.

Unsympathetic, and therefore misdirected, readings of the Holy Bible therefore are much more common than one might otherwise be led to think. 

(a) Universities, beginning in the 1700s, have increasingly read the Holy Bible with the (astoundingly unscientific) presuppositions that God is not able to perform miracles or to author a consistent text. 

(b) Protestants, beginning with Martin Luther, have usually made their own interpretation of Paul the central criterion for how to interpret and authenticate the rest of the Holy Bible. [2]

(c) Protestants' disparagement of the Greek books of the Old Testament have discouraged Bible interpreters from confirming interpretations of for example New Testament passages, through the use of those books. 



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Notes
[1] For references and further discussion of Pragmatics and other language sciences, please see my earlier essays, "A very brief critique of the dominant hypothesis of Pragmatics", "A Christian reflexion on Pragmatics", and "Sanctification methods, the Competitive Principle, etc."

[2] For examples of how this method for reading goes very wrong, please see the brief discussions here: A Guide to Misleading Bible Quotes.

Meditating with God's Word in the Psalter

From the Ancient Greek witness to Psalm 62[3], this is a newly proposed translation:

1  A psalm by David; in him being in the desert of Judea.

2  The God is the God of mine: 

     Toward You, I rise with the horizon's light.

     It thirsts for You—the soul of mine. 

     How many times multiplied [hungers] the flesh of mine for You, 

     in a land desolate and trackless and waterless?

3   Thusly, in the holy I am seen by You,

     with beholding Your power and Your glory. (CFB)


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Notes

(1) In verse 2, the Hebrew word used first is Elohim, "Gods". This can be considered a reference to the plurality of persons within the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

(2) A verb is omitted in verse 2 in the Greek Septuagint. Arguably, it is also omitted in the Hebrew. The Hebrew word kamah is found only here, once, in the Hebrew Bible, and the Greek Septuagint translator appears to have considered it not a verb at all but a pronoun, posalpos, "how many times multiplied", perhaps reading kamah as an ellision of ki (so that) or koh (thus) + mah (how).

(3) Meditation point: Why is the verb omitted in verse 2? Does one's flesh thirst for God? Or does one's flesh reject God (how many times multiplied)? Consider the person who overeats or overdrinks when wandering in a spiritually desolate, trackless and waterless land?

(4) Meditation point: Why, in verse 3, do the Greek and the Hebrew not specify more than "in the holy"? Consider Christ Jesus's conversation with the Samarian woman in Sychar, at Jacob's well.
"The woman said to Him, 'Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.' Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.'" (John 4:19-24, NKJV)

(5) In verse 3, the Greek verb is aorist indicative, the Hebrew verb is Qal perfect; here we propose it has the aorist gnomic, stative, aspectually perfective sense, i.e. having been chastized, and with the beholding of God's power and glory, thusly is the psalmist seen by God.

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NKJV: Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

CFB: Scripture quoted from the Christ Family Bible. Copyright © 2017 by J.J. Thomas. Used by permission. All rights reserved.