Comment by giancarlostoro
5 days ago
I would be really interested in this done to the Peshitta Bible, which is roughly as old as the Septuagint. Peshitta is in Aramaic a sister language to Hebrew. Over the years I've found interesting insights about verses that make way less sense in Greek but in Aramaic they make drastically more sense. It seems that somehow the Greek translated from some other source where in Aramaic or Hebrew the word used could have been one of two words, the Greek seemed to pick the worst possible representation in some cases that the Aramaic highlights.
For example. It is easier for a Camel to go into the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into Heaven. If you read this, it makes it sound like Abraham cannot get into Heaven, wasn't he wealthy? Heck, there's others who were wealthy in scripture, even kings are they all doomed? In Aramaic the same word that in Greek is said to mean camel, can also mean rope.
If you think about a rope going through the eye of a needle, and what it TAKES for a rope to go through the eye of a needle, aka removing all the threads or layers (humbling the person and forcing them to strip themselves down to their core) in order to make it through the eye of the needle. Or in other words, you must be willing to dethatch yourself from all your wealth. Remember the guy who asked Jesus was he must do to be saved and enter heaven, and walked away when Jesus told him to give away everything he owned to the poor? That is the same exact message.
There's a few other verses, but that's the main one that always strikes me. Some of them are far more nuanced and I get into hours of debate with people who are ignoring everything I am saying (I don't know why, I try to lay it all out in the most simple way possible) as if I'm breaking the law, but its obvious to me that we don't have perfect copies of the Bible. I still think the overall message is the same though, so nothing wrong with that. It proves yet again that men are all fallible.
Sorry for the tangent. I used to deep dive translations and their nuances, and the Aramaic based Bibles are very interesting.
There's also an Aleh Tav Old Testament Bible which is fascinating to me. It adds the Aleph Tav anywhere it would be in the Hebrew into the English.
But the Peshitta is 300 years after the Septuagint and the verse you mention was written in Greek in a gospel, not the Hebrew Bible. I don't know how the translators of the Peshitta would have any special access to sayings of Jesus that predate the Gospels we have now. I don't know if there is any hard evidence that the Gospel authors had actual eye witness written sources in the language that Jesus spoke. So you have to assume that Jesus used Gamla in Aramaic and that the Gospel writer mistranslated it when writing in Greek but that the Peshitta gives special insight by retranslating it back to the ambiguous word. Then you have to make another leap to think that it is somehow possible to manipulate a rope to be the size of a thread. Sounds like a lot of histrionics to justify Abraham going to Paradise when the simpler explanation is that it's just a concept of difficulty rather than a logical word problem. This seems less plausible than the Eye of Needle gate theory which many Christian teachers often reference.
The Peshitta was over a few centuries. Have you never seen the threads of a rope becoming undone? To the rich man covered in wealth, it would be chaos if they love their wealth more than they love God. My point is that it makes way more sense and yes it is symbolic, but a camel never made any sense to me and to a lot of people for that matter.
Correct, the Peshitta translations of the Gospels were done in the 5th century ce. They were not closer to the Hebrew of the original as you suggested. If you like it better that's fine but it's not inherently better because it was earlier or had better understanding of original languages.
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> Heck, there's others who were wealthy in scripture, even kings are they all doomed?
This is a great question. In the next verses, the disciples ask pretty much the same thing: "Who then can be saved?" and then Jesus explains to them:
Whether it's a camel or a rope (and whether it's a literal needle or a small city gate, as some people argue), I think is less important (though still interesting). Either way, after the rich young ruler walks away, Jesus turns to his disciples and paints a picture something that's completely impossible without God, no matter how hard we might try by ourselves.
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Genesis is a theological narrative, which is very different to most things we read these days, especially as a software engineer.
1. The general consensus is that there were more people. This is assumed in Genesis and it (annoyingly!) doesn't bother to explain it, as the audience at the time already assumed it. Also, the authors weren't interested in all the logistics and technicalities that we are today.
2. Cities referenced in Genesis were likely fortified settlements, rather than like modern cities.
The idea that people in Africa could only build simple huts is a myth that came from the colonial era. Africa had large cities, architecture and metallurgy while parts of Europe were still tribal.
If you're keen to learn more, there are some good books that explain this much better than a comment can, such as "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth" by Fee & Stuart and "Genesis for Normal People" by Pete Enns. I haven't read it but "African Civilizations" by Graham Connah is probably the go-to book on how African cities and technologies were so much further ahead than traditional European/US narratives place them.
The best resource for these kinds of questions is probably "The Bible Project". They have a load of YouTube videos and podcasts that cover these kinds of questions.
thanks. if there were more people, then how can we all get the sin from adam and eve:
The biblical data consistently understands Adam and Eve to have been real individual human beings from whom all humanity’s descent may be traced. This representation begins as early as Genesis 4, where Adam and Eve have sexual relations and produce children, one of whom kills another. In Genesis 5, there is a lengthy genealogy of Adam’s descendants, whose offspring eventually form all the nations of the world listed in Genesis 10. The contents of these stories are reproduced in similar genealogies in the books of Chronicles and Luke, which trace Adam’s descendants down to those who returned from the exile (1 Chronicles 1–9) and to Jesus Christ (Luke 3:23–38).
I don't fully know, however, I will note that to my understanding, since Moses wrote the fist five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) if you will note... Moses came long after these events. I don't know what his source material was, but if it was word of mouth or other scrolls, its possible people in his time had access to those other scrolls which are now lost to time. If he felt that anyone could read the other scrolls for more information I could understand why there's not more information about these people.
I have no idea why some people do what they do. I will say I am very jealous of the Amish because they don't have the stresses I have, or half of the issues I have. No money for gas? I don't think they need to worry or care about it.
The other thing is, what does it really mean that he made a city? It could mean that he started an encampment elsewhere. we don't know how many other people God would have made during Adam / Cains time, I would imagine God would have made Cain a wife at some point.
Once we get to Cain and Able, it is far easier to understand if we think of these names as tribes of humans, and if we accept that there were other humans outside of the area of Adam an Eve.
This is my thoughts as well, I think God made other people they were just not entirely necessary to be captured in Genesis itself. There's probably other scrolls about them elsewhere.