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Talk:John 1-7 (Translated) (view source)
Revision as of 06:50, November 3, 2009
, 06:50, November 3, 2009→Aramaic solution to "Logos" controversy?
Seeing how the LXX translated the "word" of God in the Hebrew text as the logos of God prompted Philo to use the term as well, according to Williamson. But Philo would have also been aware that the idea of the logos mirrored the wisdom of God. The wisdom of God had many of the same "attributes and functions" as the logos of God, as found in the Hebrew text at Psalm 104:24, and Proverbs 3:19. But it was also in Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon where the qualities of Wisdom could be compared with the logos. In the Wisdom of Solomon we read that Wisdom is the "fashioner of all things"; "the breath of the power of God". (7:22, 24-25) But what made the logos win out over wisdom was most likely that logos is masculine, while wisdom - sophia - is feminine, making it "much more useful because of its masculinity to both Jewish and Christian writers in the first century AD" - according to Williamson (p. 104-5) If John was one of those first century writers so influenced, then it is easy to see how his reading of the Wisdom of Solomon 9:15 - substituting logos for wisdom - could have influenced his gospel: "For a perishable body weighs down the soul, And its earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind". In his gospel, verse 1:14, John wrote that the logos became flesh, and "pitched its tent" among us. John may have been communicating to both a Greek and Jewish audience in terms that they would understand. But he was also deeply influenced by both the Greek and Jewish world in which he lived, and which helped shape his gospel. - Danielitld
Seeing how the LXX translated the "word" of God in the Hebrew text as the logos of God prompted Philo to use the term as well, according to Williamson. But Philo would have also been aware that the idea of the logos mirrored the wisdom of God. The wisdom of God had many of the same "attributes and functions" as the logos of God, as found in the Hebrew text at Psalm 104:24, and Proverbs 3:19. But it was also in Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon where the qualities of Wisdom could be compared with the logos. In the Wisdom of Solomon we read that Wisdom is the "fashioner of all things"; "the breath of the power of God". (7:22, 24-25) But what made the logos win out over wisdom was most likely that logos is masculine, while wisdom - sophia - is feminine, making it "much more useful because of its masculinity to both Jewish and Christian writers in the first century AD" - according to Williamson (p. 104-5) If John was one of those first century writers so influenced, then it is easy to see how his reading of the Wisdom of Solomon 9:15 - substituting logos for wisdom - could have influenced his gospel: "For a perishable body weighs down the soul, And its earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind". In his gospel, verse 1:14, John wrote that the logos became flesh, and "pitched its tent" among us. John may have been communicating to both a Greek and Jewish audience in terms that they would understand. But he was also deeply influenced by both the Greek and Jewish world in which he lived, and which helped shape his gospel. - Danielitld
Dear Daniel, Michael, Andy, and whatever other good angels are listening in to this most recent conversation, all this goes to show that whatever good will come from these discussions to issue forth in benefit to the Conservative translation, great good is coming out anyway in the discussion itself. I will ask your opinions concerning what I will present that to me decides the case for translating the Greek "logos" of out text with the understanding that it means what is simply posited and echoed in many of the translations - "Word", (but this word being understood in its Aramaic dress "Memr'a" with its usage as spoken about above (that is not to say that I know how to put it succinctly in idiomatic English!) Here is what I would say in support of what I have just said. It is clear to me that what "informs" John 1:1 is Genesis 1:1. "''In the beginning'' was the Word (as I would put it)" must have been written by an author (human) who has had resounding in the inner ears of his head, the mighty words of the beginning of our faith, ''In the beginning'' God created". Certainly what follows in that first Chapter of Genesis over and over, in the making of all, is "and God said", "and God said" and "God said" Each of these "sayings" bears the adumbrations of "Memr'a". And just as certainly the Son, having come and shall come again, is known in the New Testament as the "Word of God" - and for good reason!. And just as certainly does the N.T. Epistles, and you can review them in your mind, see the Son as the One, and the vehicle by which the created universe came into existance - He is the "God said" of Genesis. All this latter, together with the Genesis 1. -Gospel of John 1. literary "conjunction", decides it for me that "logos" is to be translated as "Word" and that understood as the Memr'a. I believe that is what was in John's mind, and I believe that his readership among the Aramaic biblically imbued Hellenistic Jews, of which there were, within and without the Church, would have understood him, and understood the audacity of it all that the Almighty God Himsel, ripping away all guise intended to obscure and hold Him at arms length, would have come down, taken flesh, and rustled around among us. But if there were none of these people around, If John would have uttered what was in his mind by himself in the confines of his bedroom, I think that John would have said it anyway. That's how real progress is made in this turgid world of ours![[User:BertSchlossberg|Bert Schlossberg]] 01:50, 3 November 2009 (EST)