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The Apocalypse of John, by Charles C. Torrey

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  • #31
    Continued from last post above ↑

    Continuation of Charles C. Torrey's Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958):
    J. H. Moulton, Grammar of New Testament Greek, I, 13, charges Aquila with ignorance; and in characterizing the author of Greek Revelation he says on page 9, using 1:5, ho mártus for illustration, "His grammatical sense is satisfied when the governing work has affected the case of one object." As far as grammatical sense is concerned, the fact―not mentioned by Moulton―is that the writer's chief attention throughout this curious "Greek" document was given to Semitic grammar. It is precisely in the degree of such attention that the peculiarity of Revelation's language consists. But what the translator especially aimed to "satisfy" was his sense of responsibility as the translator of a momentous revelation.

    To be continued...

    Comment


    • #32
      Continued from last post above ↑

      Continuation of Charles C. Torrey's Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958):
      When Hellenist Jews and Gentile Christians came to such books as this, they were not seeking aesthetic satisfaction: what they desired was to learn what they must do to be saved. The translated writings―law, prophets, psalms, gospels―were cherished and revered as pillars of religious faith, not at all as monuments of literature. The devout readers of that day could enjoy good Greek at will, at any time; the rare opportunity, which they could not in any way afford to miss, was that of finding out just what God's inspired servants had written, or the voice of the Messiah had uttered, and this is what the translator set himself to show them.

      To be continued...

      Comment


      • #33
        Continued from last post above ↑

        Continuation of Charles C. Torrey's Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958):
        If "translation Greek" were not such an unfamiliar thing, the riddle presented by the language of Revelation might have been solved long ago. New Testament scholars have exhibited in their writings a pretty complete lack of acquaintance with this variety of Greek, and consequent misunderstanding of its nature. The outstanding example of this failure is Moulton's Prolegomena (Grammar, Vol. I), but other examples are plentiful. This is hardly surprising, for until recently the idea that N.T. books might originally have been written in some other language than Greek had scarcely been entertained at all. It was felt that the curious idiom seen in each of the Four Gospels, in a part of Acts, and most noticeable in the Apocalypse must somehow be capable of explanation as a variety of Hellenistic usage. The false hope was cherished that a colloquial dialect having some resemblance to this would be found in the papyri. "Oral tradition" has been ridiculously overworked. Finally, the Graeco-Semitic jargon is in itself not attractive―only when its origin is understood does it become highly interesting; it was easiest simply to record its barbarisms while waiting for some adequate explanation of their presence.

        To be continued...

        Comment


        • #34
          Continued from last post above ↑

          Continuation of Charles C. Torrey's Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958):
          Nevertheless, since it was well know that the foreign admixture in this variety of N.T. Greek was Aramaic or Hebrew; since also the entire argument in the Gospels is addressed to men familiar with the Hebrew scriptures, while the atmosphere of every one of these documents is plainly Palestinian; it might have been expected that specialists in New Testament science would begin to pay close attention to the Greek of the Old Testament with its array of Graeco-Semitc barbarisms. If they had done this they would have discovered the very same language mixture as is illustrated in the N.T. writings above named. In the Conybeare and Stock Selections from the Septuagint (1905), page 21, the editors asserted, in a burst of optimism, that there were "signs that scholars are beginning to realize the importance of the study of the Greek Old Testament in its bearing upon the interpretation of the New." What these signs can have been is an interesting question.

          To be continued...

          Comment


          • #35
            Continued from last post above ↑

            Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958), by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932).
            It is perhaps needless to say that the influence of a critical premise firmly held can suffice to blind the eyes of even the best-equipped scholars in either field, Greek studies or Semitics, preventing them from seeing the truth. Thus Wellhausen was effectually debarred by his own theories from recognizing Semitic books rendered into Greek in our New Testament, see Our Translated Gospels, p. liv, note [see below -JR]; and this was also the case with Charles in his commentary on Revelation, as will presently appear.

            Below is the note referenced above by Torrey:
            Wellhausen, it should be said, was debarred from holding any comprehensive and definite theory of translated gospels by his firmly held view of their late origin. For him, an absolutely fixed point was provided by his identification of the Zachariah of Mt. 23:35f. with the Zachariah who was killed by the Zealots in 67 or 68 A.D. (Jos. Jewish War, iv, 5, 4). This he repeated in many places and insisted upon with some vehemence, not without ridicule of those who hold another view. Luke decidedly later, John later still.

            The identification, attractive and proposed long ago, was shown by Whiston (note on the Josephus passage) to be unsound, and was completely refuted by the late G. F. Moore (J.A.O.S., vol. 26, pp. 317-323), whose acquaintance with Jewish literature, and with Jewish Aramaic, was superior to Wellhausen’s.

            To be continued...

            Comment


            • #36
              Continued from last post above ↑

              Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958), by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932).
              The Language is Aramaic

              The original language of Revelation was Aramaic, not Hebrew. The fact that it was Semitic, not Greek, is convincingly shown by the material collected by Charles in his two volumes. On page after page, from the beginning to the end, he explains the constant succession of barbarisms by referring to the O.T. parallels either in the original or in the LXX version; by retroverting a great many of the troublesome phrases, word by word, into idiomatic Hebrew: and by demonstrating, as others had done, that the O.T . passages of the book are regularly rendered directly and independently from the original text. Semitic idiom in unbroken flow through twenty-two chapters―this is the phenomenon that calls for explanation.

              To be continued...

              Comment


              • #37
                Continued from last post above ↑

                Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958), by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932):
                Charles' own theory has already been set forth in the preceding pages. He thought of the idiom as Hebrew; and he accounted for its Greek dress by supposing that the author of Revelation "thought in Semitic while trying to write in Greek"; the theory to which so many scholars have been driven in the vain attempt to interpret the Four Gospels as Greek compositions.

                To be continued...

                Comment


                • #38
                  Continued from last post above ↑

                  Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958), by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932):
                  Regarding the designation of the idiom as Hebrew: it may in the first place be set down as certain that the native tongue of the supposed Semite was Aramaic. Why the tour de force of writing Hebrew in Greek words instead of thinking in his own language? (It is a somewhat similar case when Luke is seen to "think in Hebrew" in the first two chapters of his Gospel, and then to "think in Aramaic" during all the rest of the book.) Again, it is not true that the unquestionably Semitic idiom of the Apocalypse is specifically Hebrew. Charles does not take Aramaic into account; in fact, it is only very rarely that he mentions it in any connection.

                  To be continued...

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Continued from last post above ↑

                    Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958), by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932):
                    Now the idiom of the one language is usually identical with that of the other. What is said in Hebrew can ordinarily be said in the same number of words―often with the very same words―in Aramaic; and this is especially the case where Jewish documents are concerned. No one of the Semitisms which Charles has so ably and convincingly demonstrated can be claimed to give support to his contention as to the particular idiom underlying the Greek. In 2, 473, he gives a list of some fifty or more "Hebraisms." Not only are these all equally good Aramaisms, but in a few cases the usage is more characteristically Aramaic than Hebrew. On page cl there are mentioned four passages "which presuppose mistranslation [from Hebrew] or a corrupt Hebrew original," namely 13:3, 11 and 15:5, 6. Since these passages are all discussed in the following pages, it will suffice to mention them here. They will be found to testify to Aramaic rather than to Hebrew. The case of 15:6, where a long-standing problem is correctly solved by Charles, is especially interesting.

                    To be continued...

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Continued from last post above ↑

                      Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958), by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932):
                      As for "thinking in Semitic while writing in Greek": this too-familiar theory ought to be buried and never resurrected. As the history of literature sufficiently shows, it is a mere delusion―a desperate attempt to explain what otherwise seemed inexplicable, the hypothesis of translation being ruled out. The proceeding supposed would be impossible in any case, and the supposition itself is utterly absurd in the view of (1) the amount and character of the N.T. material concerned, and (2) the light thrown on the matter by O.T. Greek.

                      To be continued...

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Continued from last post above ↑

                        Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958), by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932):
                        Especially interesting is the testimony of our apocalypse in regard to the Aramaic language. In this present study the Critical Notes [see below -JR] provide abundant illustration that the Apocalypse is Aramaic throughout.

                        After his 89 page Introduction (we are now on page 29), Torrey concludes his Apocalypse of John with 69 pages of Critical Notes, which I will present after the Introduction is finished.

                        To be continued...

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Continued from last post above ↑

                          Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958) by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932):
                          During the Persian period (sixth to fourth centuries B.C.) Aramaic had taken possession of nearly all western Asia, making this area largely bilingual. With the coming of Alexander and the Greeks this was changed, but not immediately and not everywhere. In some regions Greek took possession, but in others Aramaic persisted. An interesting record from the Persian period is a bilingual inscription from one of the seven churches which later plays a part in our Apocalypse of John. This is the inscription from Sardis―see Enno Littmann's report in Lydian Inscriptions, "Publications of the American Society for the Excavation of Sardis," 6 (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1916), Part 1, ix-85; and C. C. Torrey, "The Bilingual Inscription from Sardis," ASJL, 34, No. 3 April 1918), 185-98. This inscription in Lydian and some in Aramaic, is dated (line 1) from the tenth year of King Artaxerxes, meaning Artaxerxes I, or 455 B.C. For more than one reason this inscription is of interest. It touches the New Testament in its reference (line 7) to "Artemis of the Ephesians" (Acts 19:28, 35). It also emphasizes the fact that the seven Greek churches of the Apocalypse of John were in the region which had been Aramaic. This region, of course, included Palestine, where Josephus did his work. Josephus wrote the first draft of his History of the Jewish War in what he termed "the language of our country," meaning Aramaic, the most natural medium for him to use. At least in this case the old widespread language held firm. The second draft was written in Greek for the benefit of Greeks and Romans.

                          To be continued...

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Continued from last post above ↑

                            Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958) by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932):
                            It is in connection with this use of Aramaic as a literary language that the Dead Sea Scrolls offer some of their most important testimony. Many students of the Scrolls must have made the observation which Miller Burrows makes on page 324 of his authoritative book, The Dead Sea Scrolls:
                            The mother tongue of most of the Jews of Palestine at this time was Aramaic. Hebrew may have been used more for religious literature because it was the language of Scripture and the synagogue. It must not be forgotten, however, that a sufficient quantity of Aramaic texts has been found to demonstrate the use of Aramaic also as a literary language. The Aramaic manuscripts of Qumran give us our first literary documents in a form of Aramaic used in Palestine in the time of Christ. Hitherto the only Aramaic documents known from this period were brief inscriptions.

                            To be continued...

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              Continued from last post above ↑

                              Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958) by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932):
                              Ever since Gustaf Dalman's Worte Jesu (Leipzig, 1898), followed by his Jesus-Jeschua (Leipzig, 1922), and by Arnold Meyer's Jesu Muttersprache (Freiburg i. B. and Leipzig, 1896), as well as a few later books of the same nature, it was well understood, at least among German scholars, that the language of Jesus and his disciples was Aramaic. What gave Julius Wellhausen his new idea of the part played by translation in the earliest Christian writings, however, was not the work of Dalman and the others, but the publication of the Old Syriac Gospels in 1894. (See article, "Wellhausen's Approach to the Aramaic Gospels" in the DMG, 101 [1951], 123-37.) Wellhausen was the first to see and proclaim that the first Christian writings were Aramaic. This new doctrine was, indeed, eventually repudiated by him. Nevertheless, the honor of perceiving the truth and of giving it brilliant demonstration belongs to him.

                              Since Wellhausen it has repeatedly been maintained by the present writer that the Greek Gospels and certain other Christian documents were translations from Aramaic. This theory has been stoutly denied, and a matter of controversy. By a strange turn of fortune the question would seem to have been finally settled in favor of the Aramaic by authoritative word from first-century Palestine.

                              To be continued...

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Continued from last post above ↑

                                Continuation of the posthumously published Introduction to The Apocalypse of John (Yale University Press, 1958) by Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956), who taught Semitic languages at the Andover Theological Seminary (1892–1900), was the founding director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (1900-1901), and was Professor of Semitic Languages at Yale University (1900–1932):
                                The source of this unexpected testimony is an official document, a circular letter of instruction or bulletin sent out, presumably from Jerusalem, to the Greek churches with instructions as to the right way―the Christian way―of writing (of course in Greek transliteration) the hallowed names of the sacred books. The library in which it is preserved is that of the Greek Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Our little manuscript, which is almost the only surviving specimen of the once important "Letter of Instruction," forms a part of the famous Greek codex from which in 1883 Bishop Bryennios published the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. This codex is a veritable repository of ancient and important Christian documents. Our manuscript, occupying only a small space, stands between the Second Epistle of Clement and the Didakhē. The document not only declares the language of the Christian Church to have been Aramaic, but also makes plain why the use of it is insisted on.

                                To be continued...
                                Last edited by John Reece; 04-14-2014, 06:51 AM.

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