9:1-11

Bottomless Pit

 

Revelation 9:1, 2, 11; 11:7; 17:8; 20:1, 3:  “The bottomless pit.”

            The “Bottomless Pit” is the infinitely low, the nadir, in opposition to “heaven” as the infinitely high place, the zenith.

 

The Hebrew Tongue

 

Revelation 9:11:  “Whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon.”

 

            The Hebrew tongue was the language of the Scripture, yet even when Ezra returned from Babylon, many of the people could not understand the language of the Scripture without an interpreter, (see Nehemiah 8:2-3, 7-8).

            Regarding Ezra‘s reading of the Scripture at that time, Metzger notes that:

The Levites explained the law to the people, perhaps translating it (or its difficult portions) into Aramaic for those who may not have been familiar with Hebrew (OAA, 21, n. 48).

 

            The historian Dionysius of Alexandria, (A.D. 231-265), questioned that the Apostle John was the author of Revelation partly on the grounds that the grammatical style was different from that of John‘s Gospel.  But according to ZPBD:

The so-called grammatical mistakes are chiefly unidiomatic translations of Hebrew or Aramaic expressions, which would be impossible to render literally into Greek (ZPBD, 721).

            Dr. Robert Lindsay says that Jesus spoke in Hebrew, not in Aramaic, a closely related language.  Although Jesus used the Aramaic term “the Son of Man,” BarEnash, he was referring to the usage in the Aramaic portion of Daniel but this does not indicate that His mother tongue was Aramaic.[1]

            David Bendor-Samuel says: “When the sayings of Jesus are translated back from the Greek into Aramaic, they give evidence of being delivered in the form of Aramaic poetry.”[2]


[1] Robert Lindsay, Jesus Rabbi and Lord, (Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Cornerstone Publishing, 1990), also in broadcast on TBN, December 11, 1988, 2:30 p.m. CST)

 

[2] David Bendor-Samuel and Elaine Beekman, eds., Notes on Scripture in Use, (NOS) No. 3, June 1982, (Dallas, Texas, Summer Institute of Linguistics) 22.  See also my Commentary at 1:1 “Revelation: Definition– Hebrew“, and at 1:1 “I, John,” also Introductory Article “Dating the Book of Revelation”.

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