Lord Nyx, aka Billy Boy Gates, seems to have lost some of his cachet lately. Reporters are no longer tossing softballs at him, and critiquing him on the use of his private jet. Well, he squirmed and got all shifty eyed, you know, the reptilian eyes he hides behind his glasses. The truth is that he always travels with an entourage who look after his every whim and need. More and more I am seeing signs that these would be gods of the Archon empire are all losing their cachet. They are not as clever as they think they are. They have been plotting for a long time, but now they have used up all their clever bag of tricks and are doubling down, rather than innovating. Innovation is beyond them so they just rinse and repeat, using more force, but not getting the same results. That is the trouble with relying on the advice from the Archons. These creatures can only control through their subjects, never on their own. Thus, the limits of their subjects are their limits too. Thank God!
I hate horror stories. Couldn't watch "Alien " again even if Sigourney was naked. Maybe a movie versoin with Brooks like productions. "Springtime for Hitler and Germany" or Frankenstein "Puttin on the Ritz" For now a farcical comedy to ease and numb my mind.
I can relate. I don't like horror stories that are base of devils, evil spirits, demonic possession and so on - which is why I've never read any Steven King. But I find science fiction combined with a sort of monster format to be a different thing.
I've thought many times in the last few years when I would feel like I was living inside of a science fiction movie that whoever writes the bombshell novel describing reality will be rich when they make a movie out of it.
Oἱ ἄρχοντες are "the archons" (singular ἄρχων / archōn) -- rulers mentioned in various places in the NT (I see 37 references). It usually refers to human rulers but not always (Lk. 11:15 and John 12:31 among others).
Oἱ μεγιστᾶνες (the "megistanes") are the "important ones (of the earth -- τῆς γῆς)", the global elite it would appear, found in Revelation 6:15 and 18:23, (Mark 6:21 mentions the "local" elite, but same word).
In Rev. 6:15 oἱ μεγιστᾶνες are are hiding "themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains". In Rev. 18:23, retrospectively, they deceived the nations with their sorcery. That's going on now. The hiding in the caves is yet to come, although I'm sure they have their bunkers ready now, or at least in preparation.
Oἱ μεγιστᾶνες, unlike archons, aren't formal leaders of the people (or demons) as such, but they control their ἔμποροι τῆς γῆς, "merchants of the earth. The ἔμπορ- prefix is also associated with marketplaces and "doing business" (such as in James 4:13, or exploitative business in 2 Peter 2:3). Then there is ἐμπόριον ("emporion") in John 2:16. Guess where our word "emporium" comes from.
Seen any examples of ruling through global corporate power lately?
"and they said to the mountains and the rocks, "fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?".
No, not by that name, but οἱ μεγιστᾶνες are included (on whom I was focusing), but also οἱ βασιλεῖς τῆς γῆς (the kings of the earth) and οἱ χιλίαρχοι (literally the leaders of a thousand soldiers -- BDAG). That third kind contains the αρχ- (arch-) root, but the kings of the earth come closer to the NT usage of oἱ ἄρχοντες to represent human rulers.
A simple reading of v. 15 is "everyone from the greatest to the least". The actual text names them in greater detail. The reason everyone is behaving this way is given in vv. 16-17:
"16 and they *said to the mountains and the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the sight of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 for the great day of Their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?'" This is highly unusual.
But at this point they've been beaten, and they know it, or so I am reading it. The book of Revelation is not linear. Otherwise, I can't make sense of it. Following v.17 is ch. 7, a non-sequential interlude, and then in ch. 8, the wrath begins. I don't see any signs of effective opposition to that.
The wrath continues in ch. 9. Rev. 9:6 offers a hint of what else might have been going on in 6:16: "And in those days people will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death will flee from them!" That could explain the call for the mountains and the rocks to fall on them.
I don't have this all figured out. I'm trying to make sense of the text, in English and, when necessary, in Greek. In the NT οἱ ἄρχοντες tends to point to human rulers with certain exceptions, while the Gnostics may have been more focused on higher realms (it's been a long time since I studied those texts). The last part of ch. 6 is earth-focused, as was I in the earlier comment. In that context, archons are typically human rulers. And yes, the rulers and the elite that thought themselves so great are terrified in that passage.
Revelation is written in a series of cycles each one ending with some aspect of the final judgement of all men.
Rather than get into all that here I would recommend GK Beales commentary on the book. Well worth studying and very scholarly. Not Hal Lindsey in other words.
OK, I'll bite. Just bought Beal's unabridged Greek text commentary. Here's a snippet from it on Rev. 6:15:
15 The LXX has “the . . kings . . . and the rulers . . . and the great ones (οἱ . . . βασιλεῖς . . . καὶ οἱ ἄρκοντες . . . καὶ οἱ μεγιστᾶνες)” only in Isa. 34:12, and this, as noted above, is nearly identical to the first three groups mentioned in Rev. 6:15a (cf. also Ps. 2:2). As in Isaiah 34, so here these groups of people undergo divine judgment because they are an essential part of the corrupt world system, which must be destroyed. In both cases the precise reason for punishment is persecution of God’s people (cf. Isa. 33:1–34:13; 35:1–4; Rev. 6:9–12)...
etc. etc.
So on my first peek, he jumps into the Septuagint, brings in οἱ μεγιστᾶνες, and then ties in Isaiah, which I hadn't yet mentioned. I love it -- thank you!
I have desktop software -- Accordance -- and a library of tools. For the NT text, I have the tagged NA28 with the UBS5 apparatus, along with a stack of different English translations that correlate using Strong's keys. The BDAG is my main dictionary.
For searching on Greek roots I have been using the Mounce Greek Dictionary, which lets me bring together every word starting with the same Greek letters. It can then produce a verse reference list for a given word. That was very helpful for discovering the related ἐμπορ- words (during a word study within the last few weeks).
Interestingly, the word ἐμπορίας (trade/business) also can be found in Ezekiel 28:5 & 18, in the Septuagint, a very interesting chapter. There I don't have a dictionary to work with and tracing roots works a little differently. This root seems to be pretty common, and often associated with trouble of one kind or another. "Just doing business" is an ancient notion.
Translations tend to break word associations by root, since the same and similar-sounding original-language words are translated in different places into English words with different roots. There are clear patterns of meaning in the Greek that disappear in the English translations. Something similar happens at the sentence level when the word order and the parts of speech are changed in order to sound good in English. The original emphasis is lost, and occasionally more than that.
I have comparable tools for Hebrew, but I've barely begun to learn the language. That didn't stop me from finding an exegetical error in the sermon this morning.
Because Jesus chastised the Pharisees, he likely spoke Hebrew. He may have spoken some Greek as well. But, because he spent most of his time in Nazareth and Capernaum in Galilee, Aramaic was probably his mother language.
Yes, there are a few words of Jesus in Aramaic in the NT. The NT itself, however, was written in Koinē (meaning "common"), ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, the common language of the time and region, in active use for some 10 centuries. I'd say that was a good choice. It may bother some of the "inerrancy" folks, especially the ones that think the KJV is "it".
Would you agree that he likely spoke to his fellow Aramaic speaking Galileans in Aramaic and that initially his words were written in Aramaic and then some time later translated into Greek?
I am reasonably certain that Jesus' day-to-day language was that of everyone around him, Aramaic. It can be a little confusing because the NT Greek word for that language was a transliteration of "Hebrew", because that's what they called their Aramaic. The significance of the NT Greek is that it was accessible to a great many people, and remained accessible for centuries, not that it was the "exact words".
Kenneth Bailey engaged in some interesting speculation in his book _Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes_. He was not your typical ivory tower scholar. He lived in the Middle East for decades, knew the ancient and modern languages, and understood the cultural idiom. In this book, he offered insights into some of the things Jesus may have said in Aramaic, the difficulties of translating them into Greek, and the resulting exegetical puzzles that we have now.
"In 1965, the Baileys were reassigned to the Near East School of Theology (NEST) in Beirut, Lebanon. In 1970, they returned to the United States where Kemieth enrolled in an academic doctoral program at Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. There he subjected himself to a rigorous discipline of in-depth study of other biblical languages — Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac. Besides a newly acquired skill of reading biblical literature, the Talmud, and other Judaic commentaries in those languages, and enriched by his near-native Middle Eastern culture and his knowledge of Arabic, his attention turned to reading biblical literature through those important lenses. Combining his access to those resources with the background of his study of the gospels in Greek, he searched the Scriptures as one who could hear Jesus speaking in his native milieu with the fullness of its cultural nuances echoing in that part of the Greco-Roman Empire."
He has an impressive resume. Because I have a fascination with that time period and the life of Jesus, I may have to add a book or two of his to my well-read collection of books on the life of Jesus.
Had some of the great libraries of he world, like the one in Alexandria, not been destroyed, we might have a better understanding of what that all means. Until some forthright clairvoyant comes along to explain it, I guess it remains a part of the human mythos.
Meanwhile, it makes great fodder for story telling:)
It's like an Isaac Asimov story. Or a prediction of the near future. Or the news.
I loved Asimov as a kid. I have no aspirations to be that good. And thanks for the belly laugh:)
You have been watching the TV series from about 30 years ago "V" except we don't have the flying saucers, or at least, not yet
I haven't had a a tv since before then so I never heard of it. Had to look it up. Now I want to watch it, but not until after I get done writing this.
Lord Nyx, aka Billy Boy Gates, seems to have lost some of his cachet lately. Reporters are no longer tossing softballs at him, and critiquing him on the use of his private jet. Well, he squirmed and got all shifty eyed, you know, the reptilian eyes he hides behind his glasses. The truth is that he always travels with an entourage who look after his every whim and need. More and more I am seeing signs that these would be gods of the Archon empire are all losing their cachet. They are not as clever as they think they are. They have been plotting for a long time, but now they have used up all their clever bag of tricks and are doubling down, rather than innovating. Innovation is beyond them so they just rinse and repeat, using more force, but not getting the same results. That is the trouble with relying on the advice from the Archons. These creatures can only control through their subjects, never on their own. Thus, the limits of their subjects are their limits too. Thank God!
So true. It is just a different version of the same game format repeated over and over.
I hate horror stories. Couldn't watch "Alien " again even if Sigourney was naked. Maybe a movie versoin with Brooks like productions. "Springtime for Hitler and Germany" or Frankenstein "Puttin on the Ritz" For now a farcical comedy to ease and numb my mind.
I can relate. I don't like horror stories that are base of devils, evil spirits, demonic possession and so on - which is why I've never read any Steven King. But I find science fiction combined with a sort of monster format to be a different thing.
Starting to read like a hybrid of the Screwtape Letters (CS Lewis); That Hideous Strength by the same author, and Under the Dome (Stephen King).
I just mentioned to Antisandman why I never read Stephen King. And for some reason I've never read Lewis. Now I will... after I finish this.
Under the Dome is not a King horror story. Sci Fi/psy op would be closer.
Not exactly analagous to what you have described, but similar.
The Space trilogy is great. Out of the Silent Planet is a fav. https://www.christianbook.com/the-space-trilogy-volumes-in-1/c-s-lewis/9781451664829/pd/664829
I've thought many times in the last few years when I would feel like I was living inside of a science fiction movie that whoever writes the bombshell novel describing reality will be rich when they make a movie out of it.
In my dreams:)
Oἱ ἄρχοντες? Sounds a lot like οἱ μεγιστᾶνες to me. I do hope this ends well.
Link?
So do I.
References:
Oἱ ἄρχοντες are "the archons" (singular ἄρχων / archōn) -- rulers mentioned in various places in the NT (I see 37 references). It usually refers to human rulers but not always (Lk. 11:15 and John 12:31 among others).
Oἱ μεγιστᾶνες (the "megistanes") are the "important ones (of the earth -- τῆς γῆς)", the global elite it would appear, found in Revelation 6:15 and 18:23, (Mark 6:21 mentions the "local" elite, but same word).
In Rev. 6:15 oἱ μεγιστᾶνες are are hiding "themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains". In Rev. 18:23, retrospectively, they deceived the nations with their sorcery. That's going on now. The hiding in the caves is yet to come, although I'm sure they have their bunkers ready now, or at least in preparation.
Oἱ μεγιστᾶνες, unlike archons, aren't formal leaders of the people (or demons) as such, but they control their ἔμποροι τῆς γῆς, "merchants of the earth. The ἔμπορ- prefix is also associated with marketplaces and "doing business" (such as in James 4:13, or exploitative business in 2 Peter 2:3). Then there is ἐμπόριον ("emporion") in John 2:16. Guess where our word "emporium" comes from.
Seen any examples of ruling through global corporate power lately?
The rest of Rev 6:16 - 17
"and they said to the mountains and the rocks, "fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?".
Certainly not the archons.
No, not by that name, but οἱ μεγιστᾶνες are included (on whom I was focusing), but also οἱ βασιλεῖς τῆς γῆς (the kings of the earth) and οἱ χιλίαρχοι (literally the leaders of a thousand soldiers -- BDAG). That third kind contains the αρχ- (arch-) root, but the kings of the earth come closer to the NT usage of oἱ ἄρχοντες to represent human rulers.
A simple reading of v. 15 is "everyone from the greatest to the least". The actual text names them in greater detail. The reason everyone is behaving this way is given in vv. 16-17:
"16 and they *said to the mountains and the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the sight of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 for the great day of Their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?'" This is highly unusual.
But at this point they've been beaten, and they know it, or so I am reading it. The book of Revelation is not linear. Otherwise, I can't make sense of it. Following v.17 is ch. 7, a non-sequential interlude, and then in ch. 8, the wrath begins. I don't see any signs of effective opposition to that.
The wrath continues in ch. 9. Rev. 9:6 offers a hint of what else might have been going on in 6:16: "And in those days people will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death will flee from them!" That could explain the call for the mountains and the rocks to fall on them.
I don't have this all figured out. I'm trying to make sense of the text, in English and, when necessary, in Greek. In the NT οἱ ἄρχοντες tends to point to human rulers with certain exceptions, while the Gnostics may have been more focused on higher realms (it's been a long time since I studied those texts). The last part of ch. 6 is earth-focused, as was I in the earlier comment. In that context, archons are typically human rulers. And yes, the rulers and the elite that thought themselves so great are terrified in that passage.
Revelation is written in a series of cycles each one ending with some aspect of the final judgement of all men.
Rather than get into all that here I would recommend GK Beales commentary on the book. Well worth studying and very scholarly. Not Hal Lindsey in other words.
No, no Hal Lindsey.
OK, I'll bite. Just bought Beal's unabridged Greek text commentary. Here's a snippet from it on Rev. 6:15:
15 The LXX has “the . . kings . . . and the rulers . . . and the great ones (οἱ . . . βασιλεῖς . . . καὶ οἱ ἄρκοντες . . . καὶ οἱ μεγιστᾶνες)” only in Isa. 34:12, and this, as noted above, is nearly identical to the first three groups mentioned in Rev. 6:15a (cf. also Ps. 2:2). As in Isaiah 34, so here these groups of people undergo divine judgment because they are an essential part of the corrupt world system, which must be destroyed. In both cases the precise reason for punishment is persecution of God’s people (cf. Isa. 33:1–34:13; 35:1–4; Rev. 6:9–12)...
etc. etc.
So on my first peek, he jumps into the Septuagint, brings in οἱ μεγιστᾶνες, and then ties in Isaiah, which I hadn't yet mentioned. I love it -- thank you!
Right.
Interesting stuff.
Do you have a Greek concordance or do you just look it up online?
I have desktop software -- Accordance -- and a library of tools. For the NT text, I have the tagged NA28 with the UBS5 apparatus, along with a stack of different English translations that correlate using Strong's keys. The BDAG is my main dictionary.
For searching on Greek roots I have been using the Mounce Greek Dictionary, which lets me bring together every word starting with the same Greek letters. It can then produce a verse reference list for a given word. That was very helpful for discovering the related ἐμπορ- words (during a word study within the last few weeks).
Interestingly, the word ἐμπορίας (trade/business) also can be found in Ezekiel 28:5 & 18, in the Septuagint, a very interesting chapter. There I don't have a dictionary to work with and tracing roots works a little differently. This root seems to be pretty common, and often associated with trouble of one kind or another. "Just doing business" is an ancient notion.
Translations tend to break word associations by root, since the same and similar-sounding original-language words are translated in different places into English words with different roots. There are clear patterns of meaning in the Greek that disappear in the English translations. Something similar happens at the sentence level when the word order and the parts of speech are changed in order to sound good in English. The original emphasis is lost, and occasionally more than that.
I have comparable tools for Hebrew, but I've barely begun to learn the language. That didn't stop me from finding an exegetical error in the sermon this morning.
Impressive.
Because Jesus chastised the Pharisees, he likely spoke Hebrew. He may have spoken some Greek as well. But, because he spent most of his time in Nazareth and Capernaum in Galilee, Aramaic was probably his mother language.
Yes, there are a few words of Jesus in Aramaic in the NT. The NT itself, however, was written in Koinē (meaning "common"), ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, the common language of the time and region, in active use for some 10 centuries. I'd say that was a good choice. It may bother some of the "inerrancy" folks, especially the ones that think the KJV is "it".
Would you agree that he likely spoke to his fellow Aramaic speaking Galileans in Aramaic and that initially his words were written in Aramaic and then some time later translated into Greek?
I am reasonably certain that Jesus' day-to-day language was that of everyone around him, Aramaic. It can be a little confusing because the NT Greek word for that language was a transliteration of "Hebrew", because that's what they called their Aramaic. The significance of the NT Greek is that it was accessible to a great many people, and remained accessible for centuries, not that it was the "exact words".
Kenneth Bailey engaged in some interesting speculation in his book _Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes_. He was not your typical ivory tower scholar. He lived in the Middle East for decades, knew the ancient and modern languages, and understood the cultural idiom. In this book, he offered insights into some of the things Jesus may have said in Aramaic, the difficulties of translating them into Greek, and the resulting exegetical puzzles that we have now.
Bailey's bio can be found at https://www.kennethbailey.net/bio.
From the bio:
"In 1965, the Baileys were reassigned to the Near East School of Theology (NEST) in Beirut, Lebanon. In 1970, they returned to the United States where Kemieth enrolled in an academic doctoral program at Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. There he subjected himself to a rigorous discipline of in-depth study of other biblical languages — Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac. Besides a newly acquired skill of reading biblical literature, the Talmud, and other Judaic commentaries in those languages, and enriched by his near-native Middle Eastern culture and his knowledge of Arabic, his attention turned to reading biblical literature through those important lenses. Combining his access to those resources with the background of his study of the gospels in Greek, he searched the Scriptures as one who could hear Jesus speaking in his native milieu with the fullness of its cultural nuances echoing in that part of the Greco-Roman Empire."
He has an impressive resume. Because I have a fascination with that time period and the life of Jesus, I may have to add a book or two of his to my well-read collection of books on the life of Jesus.
Had some of the great libraries of he world, like the one in Alexandria, not been destroyed, we might have a better understanding of what that all means. Until some forthright clairvoyant comes along to explain it, I guess it remains a part of the human mythos.
Meanwhile, it makes great fodder for story telling:)
Hadn't heard of them. I like the orchestration. Reminiscent of some early John Lennon.