Month: January 2005

Down yonder, some reader write as follows:

READER A: Jesus also said he would return soon. Are you a preterist?

Yes, I tend to be a preterist when it comes to Revelation (meaning: a person who thinks that most of the book applies to the beginning of Church history). I explain the fact that Jesus said he was coming soon by one of two possibilities:

(a) Scripture often speaks of God "coming" in vengeance but without meaning that he will be physically coming. Perhaps (since Jesus is God) this applies to a non-physical "coming" of Jesus in vengeance that occurred early in Church history (e.g., the destruction of Jerusalem).

(b) The standard "A days is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day to God, so ‘soon’ is hard to interpret" reply.

I lean toward the former possibility. In any event, Revelation indicates that before there will be a big long period of time (the Millennium, which is not necessarily only a thousand years) before the end of the world and the Second Coming. Typically of Catholics, I think we are now living in that period, which corresponds to most of Church history. We are now in the period of Revelation 20:1-10, and I think the material before chapter 20 thus applies to the early part of Church history.

READER B: I think I read in one of Scott Hahn’s book that 666 could also refer to St. Solomon.

I would be surprised if Scott said that. Sometimes people link 666 with Solomon because it is once mentioned that he had 666 talents of gold a year (1 Kings 10:14 and 2 Chronicles 9:13). This seems to have no symbolic significance and is just a coincidence (like many things in Scripture). In any event, the beast of Revelation 13 clearly was an individual living in Church history (as he persecutes Christians) and not Solomon, who lived centuries earlier.

READER C: In an old Bible of an old parish priest, 666 is explained like this :
7 is the perfect number and  so 6 (7-1) is the number of what is unperfect…
3 is the nuber of God…
So 666 is the number of "what is unperfect" trying to be called God, to usupt his title…
Is it a correct interpretation ?

I’ve heard this suggested, but it seems rather speculative to me. Maybe it’s what’s happening in the text, but maybe not. The obvious alternative number to 666 (the name of the beast) is not 777 but 888 (the name of Jesus). This explanation sounds more like an attempt to reason based on broader number symbolism, while the real explanation may simply be that 666 and 888 simply were the numbers of Nero’s and Jesus’ names. (Though that in itself may be a matter of Providence.)

READER D: it seems the Nero interpretation has the strongest arguments in its
favor, even if I don’t really find it convincing. (One weakness is that
Revelation was written in Greek, not Aramaic, and there’s no hint that
St. John meant us to dig beneath the Greek language for an Aramaic
subsoil to solve the 666 puzzle.) I’m not even sure St. John expected
his first readers to recognise the number of the Beast’s name, though
that would seem to make sense too.

I agree that the connection is not a certainty, though I think it’s stronger than what you seem to think, at least given the remaining contents of the book. I also am not that disturbed by the fact that Aramaic issue. (a) It may not have been written in Greek, as the Greek of the book is notoriously barbarous. It may be an unpolished translation of an Aramaic original, as far as I know. (b) If you’re an Aramaic speaker and it’s hit you that "Caesar Nero" is 666 then you may want to use that fact because of the triple that is present in the number. The triple makes it seem more significant than 557, which is what "Caesar Nero" is in Greek. (c) John may have been such a poor Greek speaker that he might not have known how to calculate name numbers in Greek. He may have been relying on someone else to help him with the Greek for Revelation but did the number calculation in his native language. (d) John does warn the reader that it takes understanding to figure out the number. Perhaps the Aramaic issue is part of what he’s thinking of.

Also, by e-mail, a reader writes:

READER E: I was reading your inof on the net regarding false prophets and was very interested in what you had to say regarding "Nero Caesar", a couple of questions came to mind while I was reading. The first was that you made no mention of the mark (666) of the beast on the right hand or forehead as well as the mortal wound, I’m thinking that the mortal wound may not be a literal wound, however; I’m wondering about the mark, can you shed some light on this for me.  Thanks

In my opinion, the symbolism of having the number on the right hand or on the head is likely to be understood as either a symbol of loyalty to the Roman state or (more likely) participation in the cult of emperor worship.

As to the head wound, I suspect that this also may not be literal. Many have thought that it’s an expression of the myth that sprang up after Nero’s death that he wasn’t really dead and would one day return and take his revenge (much like there were rumors after World War II that Hitler wasn’t dead).

I don’t like that interpretation, though, and I think it may refer to a number of things.

An intriguing possibility is that it is meant to allude to the previous emperor Caligula, who was mad, vicious, and who demanded to be worshipped as a god–and who was assassinated by his own guards. It may be that the revival of the beast is symbolic of Nero’s rise after Caligula (with the reign of Claudius between them). In other words: The evil (symbolized as a beast) that everybody thought had died in Caligula came back in the form of Nero.

It’s a thought, anyway.

Yesterday I blogged about the fact that in Greek, Jesus’ name adds up to 888. In response, a reader asked:

All this brings to 666, the number of the beast. I’ve read somewhere
this backtranslates to Nero, though intentionally without determinism.
Is there a known spelling of Nero that makes the connection in Latin or
ancient Greek?

It is true, though the language isn’t Latin or Greek. It’s Hebrew or Aramaic. These two languages use the same alphabet, though the shapes of the letters are sometimes quite different, and as a result they used the same numbering system. Since first century Jews were Aramaic-speakers, Aramaic is really the more relevant language in this case, but because modern pastors tend to know more Hebrew than Aramaic (since most of the Old Testament is in Hebrew), you often hear that "Nero Caesar" adds up to 666 in Hebrew.

Here’s how it works:

Aramaic and Hebrew did not have vowels in the first century, so words were spelled with consonants. There were different ways one could spell words (in the absence of Webster’s dictionary), and one spelling of "Nero Caesar" (or "Caesar Nero") was NRWN QSR.

Nun = 50
Resh = 200
Waw = 6
Nun =  50

Qop = 100
Samekh = 60
Resh = 200

TOTAL = 666

Now, there’s lotsa folks who have names that add up to 666, so why should one be confident that the emperor Nero was who St. John/God had in mind in the book of Revelation?

Well, in Revelation the beast is described as a leader who demands to be worshipped as a god and who persecutes Christians? Any of St. John’s contemporaries fit that bill? Yep: Nero.

Any reason we should think that it would be one of St. John’s contemporaries? Yep, again: At its beginning and its end, the book stresses it deals with what will happen "soon" (Rev. 1:1, 22:6).

Anything else?

Yep the third: Another spelling of "Nero Caesar" in Aramaic(/Hebrew) is NRW QSR, which leaves off a nun (50), resulting in the total number 616 instead of 666.

It turns out that some early manuscripts of Revelation record the beast’s number as 616 rather than 666.

Somebody back then got it–and was used to a different spelling.

(Note: It’s interesting when you’re taking a class in Aramaic and are learning the numbering system–still in use among Aramaic-speakers today–and all this comes up. Startling confirmation of the solidity of all this.)

A reader writes:

Jimmy~

Thanks for all you do.

 

Two small easy ones:

1. I am partial to the NAB
because of the footnotes. Are the footnotes in the NAB
particularly bad, or just not particularly good?

 

2. I know you recommend the RSV:CE, which is
lacking in footnotes. Is this where the commentaries (Orchard’s, etc.) that
you recommend come into play?

In regard to the first question, there are three reasons I don’t like the NAB. First, there are the footnotes. In some editions these are likely worse than others, but even the better ones still have some bad notes (not all are bad, but some are). The notes, apparently, have been cleaned up somewhat since the 1970s, but there are still clunkers that will misinform, disturb, or even challenge the faith of readers. For example, consider this note on Matthew 16:21-23:

[21-23] This first prediction of the passion follows Mark 8:31-33 in the main and serves as a corrective to an understanding of Jesus’ messiahship as solely one of glory and triumph. By his addition of from that time on (Matthew 16:21) Matthew has emphasized that Jesus’ revelation of his coming suffering and death marks a new phase of the gospel. Neither this nor the two later passion predictions (Matthew 17:22-23; 20:17-19) can be taken as sayings that, as they stand, go back to Jesus himself. However, it is probable that he foresaw that his mission would entail suffering and perhaps death, but was confident that he would ultimately be vindicated by God (see Matthew 26:29). [SOURCE]

HUH???

Jesus couldn’t actually predict the future? He wasn’t a true prophet? He didn’t know about his death and resurrection? He could only foresee that "his mission would entail suffering and perhaps death?"

Sorry, but this is flatly inconsistent with the Christian faith.

Second, the book introductions to the NAB rush willy-nilly to embrace modern higher critical theories that, while some may be tolerable or even correct, are by no means certain. These introductions present these higher critical theories as The Truth, when in fact many of these are speculative at best. (They also have a faith-undermining tendency for many who are not secure in their faith.)

The third problem is that I just think the NAB is a lousy translation. There was a period in which I would tense up at Mass every day, worried about what the NAB would get wrong today. There are so many squishy, tone-deaf, and way-beyond-the-text translations in the NAB that anyone with a knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew has to cringe when it’s read at Mass.

That’s not to say that it never gets it right. In fact, I’m using the NAB as the Bible translation I’m quoting in a booklet I’m writing for Catholic Answers right now. The reason is that, in this case, the NAB happens to better render the passages I most need to quote. But this is an exceptional situation. In general, I can’t recommend it.

Also, if you’re wanting to do Bible study (as opposed to simply Bible reading) then you don’t want a dynamic equivalence translation anyway. You want a formal equivalence or "literal" translation, as these preserve more of the data from the original text, even though they are a bit harder to read.

With regard to the second question, actually the RSV:CE does have notes, but they’re endnotes (at the end of each testament) rather than footnotes (at the foot of the page). But yes, commentaries like Orchard and others are a great supplement to it. Orchard will add far more data to your study of Scripture (good, orthodox data at that, even if some of it is a little out of date) than will be found in any edition with footnotes. That’s the way it always works: Commentaries add more data than can be fit into a Bible via footnotes.

Hope this helps!