Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Rev 22:18-19 Message-ID: Date: 5 Jul 89 06:25:02 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 45 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu This discussion of Rev 22:18-19 moved me to look it up in Greek. Here it is. This is Alfred Marshall's literal translation, slightly cleaned up from the Interlinear Greek-English NT published by Zondervan. It's pretty easy to verify that at least as it bears on this discussion the translation is right. I bear witness to everyone hearing the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds to them, God will add upon him the plagues written in this scroll; and if anyone takes away from the words of the scroll of this prophecy, God will take away his part of the tree of life and out of the holy city, of the things writte nin this scroll. It seems pretty obvious that it is referring to Rev. (1) First, the word which Marshall translates scroll. In fact my lexicon gives both scroll and book. However it is used in Rev elsewhere (e.g. 5:1ff, 13:8 - also 6:14, but there it is used metaphorically) to refer to a specific prophecy. (2) The passage itself refers identifies the scroll or book with "this prophecy". It mentions specific features of Rev: the plagues, the tree of life, and the holy city. Calling the whole Bible "this prophecy" would be very strange indeed, since the Bible is far more than just a prophecy. And isn't it odd that the specific features cited are those that occur in Rev? (3) We should look at the whole of Chap 22. This is not the first mention of "the prophecy of this scroll". See 22:10. This is a clear allusion to 10:4, an indication that it is referring to the part of the visions reported in Rev. that are not to be sealed. (4) There is the obvious historical fact that at this time the Bible wasn't circulating as a single scroll or book. It was too big for that to be practical. So even if we assume that the author considered his book to be part of the Bible, this doesn't seem like the word he'd use to refer to it. See e.g. the terminology in II Pet 3:16. I admit this is "human reasoning". Greek is a human language, and understanding it is a human process. If someone has a revelation from God that Rev is using words in a non-standard sense, of course there's no way I can respond to that. But I think a staightforward reading of the text is that this passage is referring to Rev. itself. I am frankly insulted by the suggestion that people who read the words in their obvious sense are smuggling in interpretations from elsewhere.