Tag Archives: Matthew Bible

Principal Matters from the Matthew Bible: Abomination

Posted on by Posted in Principal Matters A, Principal Matters Series
Researched and Prepared by Ruth Magnusson Davis
Also answers the question, What is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place?

This short post is the first in the series “Principal Matters from the 1537 Matthew Bible.” The purpose of the series is:

(1)  To get to know the Table of Principal Matters in the Matthew Bible.

(2) To learn through Bible studies from the Reformation.

“As the bees diligently do gather together sweet flowers, to make by natural craft the sweet honey, so have I done with the principal topics contained in the Bible.”

So began John Rogers’ introduction to the Table of Principal Matters in the 1537 Matthew Bible. The Table was a concordance at the front of the book. It set out Bible topics in alphabetical order. Under each topic were statements of doctrine with scripture references for further study. This series proceeds topic by topic following the order of the Table and sets out the scriptures cited, taken from the Matthew Bible. Where typographical errors in the Table prevented me from locating the correct verses, I showed the citation as written (e.g., Exodus viii.f.)

The introduction to the Principal Matters series provides important information to get the most out of the topics.

Topic: Abomination

“Abomination” is the first topic in John Rogers’ Table of Principal Matters in the Matthew Bible. Of special interest is point (6), concerning the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. This abomination was mysterious in Matthew and Mark, but Luke says what it was in his Gospel. However, many have failed to see the link between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This study made it clear.

Now, from the Matthew Bible:

Abomination

(1) Abominable before God are idols and images before whom the people bow themselves.

Deuteronomy 7:25-26 The images of their gods [the gods of the nations] you shall burn with fire. And see that you covet not the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it to yourselves, lest you be snared therewith.a Bring not therefore the abomination into your house, lest you be a damned thingb as it is. But utterly destroy it and abhor it, for it is a thing that must be destroyed.

Note a: Whatever gold or silver, or honour or profit, calls away from the word of God belongs to the images of their gods, and must therefore be abhorred; yea, even if they are good works, when you think that you do them of your own strength and not helped by God.

Note b: or cursed thing.

Deuteronomy 27:15 Cursed is he that makes any carved image or image of metal (an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman), and puts it in a secret place.

(2) That man is an abomination who forsakes the true God to serve idols, and who despises the truth for profane doctrines.

Isaiah 41:29 Lo, wicked are they, and vain, with the things also that they take in hand; yea, wind are they, and emptiness, together with their images.  

(3) We ought not to follow the abominations of the Gentiles.

Leviticus 18:30 Therefore, see that you keep my ordinances and follow none of these abominable customs that were practised before you, so that you do not defile yourselves through them. For I am the Lord your God.

(Citation not identified: Exodus viii.f.)

(4) That which men esteem to be excellent is abominable before God. Luke 16:15.

(5) The transgressors of God’s commandments are abominable.

Leviticus 26:14-17, 23-24, 30 14But if you will not hearken to me nor will do all these my commandments, 15or if you despise my ordinances, or if your souls refuse my laws, so that you will not do all my commandments but break my decree, 16then I will do this to you: I will visit you with vexations, swelling, and fevers that will destroy your eyes, and with sorrows of heart. And you will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it.

17And I will set my face against you … 23And if for all this you will not yet learn, but walk contrary to me, 24then I will also walk contrary to you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins. … 30And I will destroy your altars built upon high hills, and overthrow your images, and cast your bodies on the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you.

(6) The abomination standing in the holy place is Jerusalem besieged by her enemies.

Matthew 24:15-16 When you therefore see the abomination that betokens desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in the holy place, let him who reads it, understand it. Then let those who are in Judea flee into the mountains.

Mark 13:14 Moreover, when you see the abomination that betokens desolation, of which Daniel the prophet has spoken, standing where it ought not, let him who reads, understand. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

Luke 21:20-21 And when you see Jerusalem besieged with a host, then understand that its desolation is near. Then let the people who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are in the city get out.

Roman armies beseige Jerusalem in 70 AD. The abomination of desolation standing in the holy place had come, and would cause the desolation of the holy city and temple.

 

‘Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem’ is a painting by F. Hayez. It depicts the desolation of the second temple by Roman soldiers in 70 AD.

Notices:

– New Testament Scriptures are from the October Testament, the New Testament of the New Matthew Bible. The Old Testament Scriptures and Apocryphal writings are taken directly from the Matthew Bible, with obsolete English gently updated.

– Click here for Information about the New Matthew Bible Project, our project to gently update the 1537 Matthew Bible.

– Sample scriptures from the New Matthew Bible are here.

KW abomination of desolation standing in the holy place

Christ Our Sin Offering and Passover Lamb: The Matthew Bible vs. the Geneva Bible

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It is almost Easter in the church calendar, and time for the remembrance of how our Lord was offered up upon the cross for us. Here we see how the 1537 Matthew Bible taught this remembrance at 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Romans 8:3, and contrast it with the different teaching in the Geneva Bible on these same verses. The difference arose in part from the Geneva re-interpretation of Paul’s mysterious saying, “Christ was made sin for us.”

2 Corinthians 5:21 – Christ was made sin for us (or, became sin for us)

In the Incarnation, God the Word took on flesh. This was a unique, momentous event in the history of the world and the universe. Now there was born the only one, the Messiah and Saviour, who could be the spotless lamb and acceptable offering to God to atone for the sin of man. Jesus was thus born the Christ, both Son of God and Son of man. For God ordained that, to save us from his eternal wrath for sin, the Messiah must be made man in the flesh and must bear our punishment in his flesh. Christ was thus born to offer himself the holy, fleshly sacrifice to atone for sin – a sin offering, as graphically foreshadowed by the fleshly sacrifices of the Old Testament.

Paul taught about Christ as the divine sin offering at 2 Corinthians 5:21, which says Christ was “made to be sin for us.” However, we cannot understand this unless we first understand the Hebrew idiom that Paul employed.

An idiom is a word used in a non-standard way – that is, idiomatically – in contexts where it takes a unique, figurative meaning.[1] Idioms can be impossible for people who are not native speakers of a language, or well advanced in it, to understand.[2] William Tyndale explained in several notes in his 1534 New Testament that, in Hebrew, sometimes the word “sin” was used idiomatically to mean a “sacrifice for sin” or a “sin offering.” This odd idiom was one of many that found its way into the Greek of the New Testament. Hebrew idioms adopted into Greek or other languages are called Hebraisms.

In the 1537 Matthew Bible, John Rogers added a note explaining the Hebraism “sin” as Paul used it in 2 Corinthians:

2 Corinthians 5:21, Matthew Bible: For he hath made him *to be sin for us, which knew no sin, that we by his means should be that righteousness which before God is allowed.

MB note: To be sin for us: that is to say, to be the sacrifice for our sins. “Sin” in the Scripture is sometimes taken for the sacrifice of sin.

In other words, Christ, who was without sin, was for our sakes made a sacrifice for sin and a sin offering.

The Matthew Bible interpretation of the idiom “sin” is orthodox and traditional. In the 5th century, St. Augustine wrote that in the Bible, “sacrifices for sins are named ‘sins,’ and the punishments of sins are sometimes called ‘sins.’”[3] It seems that in the early Reformation this idiom was well understood in English circles; I chanced, while writing this, to read the work of the little-known Reformer Richard Brightwell, an associate of John Frith, who noted that “sin [means] a sacrifice for our sin, and so is ‘sin’ taken in many places of the two Testaments.”[4] In more recent times, Bible commentator Adam Clarke confirmed that this Hebraism occurs in “a multitude” of places in the Scripture.[5]

Romans 8:3

Paul also used “sin” idiomatically in Romans 8:3. Here Rogers added another explanatory note, which he took from Tyndale’s 1534 New Testament:

Romans 8:3, Matthew Bible: For what the law could not do, inasmuch as it was weak because of the flesh, that performed God, and sent his son in the similitude of sinful flesh, and by *sin damned [punished] sin in the flesh …

MB note: Sin is taken here for a sin offering, after the use of the Hebrew tongue.

Therefore, fully translated and updated, Romans 8:3 means:

For what the law could not do inasmuch as it was weak because of the flesh, that God performed, and sent his Son in the similitude of sinful flesh, and by a sin offering punished sin in the flesh …

At Romans 8:3, Tyndale used the verb “damned” emphasizing chiefly the sense “punished.” In Early Modern English, the word “damned” took the sense condemned or sentenced to punishment, just as today we would speak of someone’s “damnation” meaning his eternal punishment. The idea of punishment was, therefore, an important component of the meaning. We might say that the divine sin offering was a punishment of sin sufficient for all eternity. Galatians 3:15, where Paul wrote that Christ was made accursed for us, is sometimes associated with the idea that Christ became sin for us, and in a note on verse 15 Tyndale explained that the meaning is, “he was punished and slain for our sins.”

Thus it was that Jesus was made sin for us: through the terrible punishment he took in his own flesh, he was made the holy sin offering foreshadowed in the Passover supper and temple sacrifices. (As he himself said, “This is my body, given for you.” Lu. 22:19, 1Co. 11:24.) This explanation is simple, clear, and manifestly biblical. It does not require tortuous mental gymnastics to understand. It is also the essential gospel.

But if we do not understand how Christ was made sin for us, we lose the gospel. And because this Hebraism is indeed not well understood today, we have lost the gospel at 2 Corinthians 5:21 and at Romans 8:3. This is partly due to the new translations and interpretations introduced in the Geneva Bible, particularly the 1599 edition.

The new Geneva commentaries on how Christ was made sin for us

The New Testament of the 1560 Geneva Bible was the work of the English Puritan William Whittingham. However, it was not his original work; Whittingham took William Tyndale’s translation and, under John Calvin’s oversight, revised it and added new commentaries, often bringing new teaching.[6] The 1599 Geneva Bible used Tomson’s revised New Testament,[7] being a later revision of Whittingham’s work, and brought more new teaching. 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Romans 8:3 are examples of how, step by step, different doctrine was introduced, so that by 1599 the knowledge of the Hebraism “sin” was lost:

2 Corinthians 5:21 in the 1560 & 1599 Geneva Bible:  For he hath made him to be *sin for us, which knew no sin, that we should be made the righteousness of God in him.

1560 note: That is, a sacrifice for sin.

1599 note: A sinner, not in himself, but by imputation of the guilt of all our sins to him.

Obviously the 1560 note agrees with Tyndale, though the translation was changed. However, in 1599 an entirely new commentary was introduced. A similar thing happened at Romans 8:3 (note, the brackets are original in the Geneva revision below):

Romans 8:3 in the 1560 & 1599 Geneva Bible: For (that that was impossible to the Law, inasmuch as it was weak, because of the flesh) God sending his own Son, in the similitude of (4)sinful flesh, and *for (5)sin, (6)condemned sin in the flesh  …

1560 note: *or, by sin.

1599 note 4: Of man’s nature which was corrupt through sin until he sanctified it.

1599 note 5: To abolish sin in our flesh.

1599 note 6: Showed that sin hath no right in us.

Much could be said on this, but I limit my comments to the six points below:

(1) Whittingham changed the preposition of agency (by sin) to a preposition of service (for sin). This made it difficult to understand that by a sin offering, sin was punished in the flesh, though the 1560 marginal note helped. (Modern Bibles handle this in a variety of ways.)

(2) Whittingham changed “damned” to “condemned.” This contributed to losing the sense “punished.”

(3) The editors of the 1599 Geneva Bible apparently rejected the traditional understanding of the Hebrew idiom – rejected it completely, deliberately, and silently. They did not openly refute it, nor mention it as an alternate interpretation. I have not seen where, in any other place in the 1599 Geneva version, the meaning of the Hebraism “sin” was acknowledged or taught. (If anyone finds it, please let me know.)

(4) Of particular concern, the 1599 GNV notes misrepresent the accomplishment and work of the cross. Especially, note 5 says Christ came to abolish sin in our flesh rather than to take our punishment for sin in his flesh. Among other problems – including the novel idea that sin can be eradicated from the flesh[8] – this confuses the offices of Christ and of the Holy Spirit; in particular, it confuses the propitiating work of Christ with the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. On the cross, Jesus took our punishment in his flesh to appease the wrath of God and reconcile us to God: his work there was to take on himself the punishment of sin, not to sanctify us from sin. Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit, which follows after salvation and faith. Thus the Geneva Bible confused and even falsified the work and offices of the Persons of the Trinity – and in so doing, it manifestly changed the gospel.[9]

(5) Note 6 in the 1599 GNV twists the cross into a metaphor: the Lamb, his flesh torn and bleeding, dying as he hung on the cross to atone for our sins, was no sin sacrifice, but was showing that sin has “no right” in us. Again, this denies Christ’s sacrificial work on the cross, and it suppresses the meaning and significance of his self-offering. This flows from rejecting the traditional understanding of the Hebraism “sin.”

(6) It is very subtle, but note 6 also undermines the biblical understanding of the law, which says the disobedience of our first parents did indeed give sin “right” in us (to use the strange GNV terminology). Sin, and therefore death, were our parents’ due for their disobedience to God’s law and commandment, and are our due under the law as their heirs; thus sin does have “right” in us (though again, this is a strange way to speak about it). That is why we needed a saviour born under the law, who could redeem us from the law (Gal. 4:3-5). Therefore, note 6 is based on a premise that again changes the gospel, in that it changes the purpose and significance of Christ’s coming and work on the cross.

The last three points should cause any objective and biblically literate reader to wonder about the doctrine of the Geneva Bible. Indeed, a careful examination of the notes reveals that, in many essential respects, the Puritan commentaries, especially in 1599, taught another gospel than that taught in the Matthew Bible – so different, and in so many points, they cannot be reconciled. This is amply demonstrated in my new release, The Story of the Matthew Bible: Part 2, The Scriptures Then and Now, which looks at the different Geneva treatment of the New Covenant, the miracles of Christ and his other works, the church, and more. I have also blogged about the significant Geneva revisions to 1 Peter 1:13 here, which revisions led to the destruction of the doctrine of the revelation of Christ through preaching. God willing, I will also blog soon about how the Geneva Bible lost the gospel in the book of Job.

After I (R.M.D.) became aware that most moderns do not understand the Hebraism “Christ was made sin for us,” I emended later editions of the October Testament to give the idiomatic meaning plainly in the biblical text at 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Romans 8:3. It needs to be clear in the text, not tucked away in a note. Some other modern Bibles have done the same, including the NASB and Christian Standard Bible; however, they kept the word “condemned” at Romans 8:3, which, in my view, muddies the water. The CSB has “He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering.”

The final revision of Romans 8:3-4 in the October Testament (New Matthew Bible) is,

3For what the law could not do, inasmuch as it was weak because of the flesh, God has performed. He sent his Son in the similitude of sinful flesh, and by a sin offering punished sin in the flesh, 4so that the righteousness required by the law may be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.

With the benefit of hindsight, Tyndale’s literal translations of the Hebraism “sin” were not the best choice. As he himself once wrote, “Words that are not understood, profit not.”

Ruth Magnusson Davis, blog post April 1 2021: William Tyndale on How Christ Was Made Sin for Us. The Matthew Bible vs. the Geneva Bible.

_____________________

[1] An idiom can be a word or a saying. Here we are dealing with just the word “sin” used idiomatically.

[2] I can testify to the difficulty of idioms for non-native speakers of a language. I studied civil law in Québec, Canada. I passed my days studying in the French language and I wrote exams in French. This was only a little more difficult for me than studying in English. However, if I went to a coffee shop I would be lucky to understand half of the conversation there. The difference was the local idioms, which I did not know. The French in my university environment was standard, international French.

[3]Augustine of Hippo, Against Lying: To Consentius, trans. Rev. H. Browne., ed. Philip Schaff (Charleston USA: no pub., facsimile, 2015), 40.

[4] Richard Brightwell, “A Pistle to the Christen Reader,” contained in The Revelation of Antichrist in The Works of the English Reformers: William Tyndale and John Frith, editor Thomas Russell, Vol. III (London: Ebenezer Palmer, 1831), 460.

[5] Adam Clarke wrote on Romans 8:3 that God in Christ “did that which the law could not do; i.e. purchased pardon for the sinner, and brought every believer into the favor of God. And this is effected by the incarnation of Christ: He, in whom dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily, took upon him the likeness of sinful flesh, that is, a human body like ours, but not sinful as ours; and for sin, και περι ἁμαρτιας, and as a Sacrifice for Sin, (this is the sense of the word in a multitude of places), condemned sin in the flesh – condemned that to death and destruction which had condemned us to both.” (https://www.studylight.org/commentary/romans/8-3.html#verse-acc, accessed March 29, 2021.)

[6] The dramatic nature of the new commentaries in the Geneva Bible, both in 1560 and in 1599, is shown at length in Part 2 of The Story of the Matthew Bible: The Scriptures Then and Now.

[7] See the Tolle Lege edition of the 1599 Geneva Bible at page xxiv. No additional information about Tomson is given there. According to a Wikipedia article, he was Laurence Tomson, an English Calvinist, who published his first revision of the Geneva New Testament in 1576. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Tomson, accessed March 29, 2021.)

[8] The Bible does not say sin can be abolished in the flesh, but that the flesh is in its very nature irremediably corrupt, and we must die to put on the incorruptible (1 Cor. 15:53). Further, it is not our flesh that is sanctified after salvation, but our life, spirit, and conscience. The flesh remains the flesh, and lusts against the spirit, as Paul said at Galatians 5:17. This is acknowledged in the 1599 GNV note on Galatians 5:17, which sets up an internal inconsistency in the commentaries.

[9] See also my paper, Christ Manifest vs. Christ Incarnate, in which I show how Calvin’s doctrine of the manifestation of Christ (as opposed to the Incarnation of Christ) changed the traditional understanding of Jesus’ office and work. Also, Calvin’s characterization of the Mosaic sacrifices as “shadowy observances” rather than “observances that foreshadowed” was one of several new interpretations that severed the all-important conceptual link between the Old Testament sacrifices and the sacrifice of the Son of God under the New Testament.

~~~~~~

KP. Christ was made sin for us, Christ became sin for us

Luther on the Meaning of “Heaven” in Genesis 1

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Genesis 1:1-8 deals with the first two days of creation and the formation of heaven and earth. In the 1549 Matthew Bible[1] these verses, gently updated,[2] read:

1 In the beginning God created heaven and earth.

2 The earth was without form and empty, and darkness was upon the deep water, and the Spirit of God moved upon the water.

3 Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good, and divided the light from the darkness,

5 and called the light the day, and the darkness the night. And so of the evening and morning was made the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament(a) between the waters, and let it divide the waters apart.

7 Then God made the firmament, and parted the waters that were under the firmament from the waters that were above the firmament; and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament heaven. And so of the evening and morning was made the second day.

According to St. Jerome, because of its great difficulty the ancient Hebrews would not allow anyone under the age of thirty to read the first chapter of Genesis. (I do not mean to suggest that this is a good thing; it is never good to withhold truth or the word of God.) Martin Luther observed that, though the language of Genesis is simple, it speaks about matters of the utmost importance and very difficult to understand. He said the theologians hardly agreed about anything in Genesis 1 except that the world was made from nothing. He rejected Augustine’s position that the days of Genesis 1 were allegorical: he believed in a literal six-day creation event (as I also do), and that the phrase “in the beginning” means at the beginning of time. (The Matthew Bible contained two charts that gave the history of time and the earth from two different young-earth perspectives. See here.)

In this post I draw from Luther’s lectures on Genesis.[3] As he said, some things we can only dimly understand, such as the formlessness of the earth at the beginning of the first day. Other things must remain in the realm of mystery, such as the nature of the waters that are above the firmament.[4] However, there is one question about which Luther was firm and clear: the meaning of “heaven,” which translates the Hebrew word shawmah-yim. Luther said the Holy Spirit uses the term “heaven” in the Scriptures differently than astronomers or philosophers do in their writings, and we must keep to the diction of the Scripture.

The meaning of “heaven” in the language of the Holy Spirit

While Scripture sometimes refers to heaven as the dwelling place of God and the angels (e.g. 1Ki. 8:39-49, 2Ch. 6:21), the first book of Genesis deals with the creation of the physical universe. Luther explained that in Genesis 1:1-2, before the physical world and heaven were fully formed, the words “heaven,” “deep water,” and “water”[5] were used for the same thing; namely, for the dark abyss of water that overlay the mass of the earth beneath. Luther imagined this deep water as an “ooze” or “mist.”[6]

During the first creation day, earth and heaven were unformed masses. Verse 6 tells us that in the second day, the ooze or mist of deep water above the earth was parted to create the firmament, which God called heaven. Rogers explained in a note:

MB note on Genesis 1:6: Firmament, or heaven. Psalm 136:5 and 8:3. It is a Hebrew word and signifies thrusting forth or spreading abroad.

Luther repeatedly stressed that this “firmament” or “heaven” means and includes the entire area above the surface of the earth. It is not limited to the skies above us, but includes the air we breathe and where small birds hop on the ground, the upper atmosphere where the clouds are and where great birds fly, and the heavens where the moon, sun, planets, and stars orbit.[7] Luther called the entire area of heaven the “upper structure” (p.33). However, in some passages only certain parts of the upper structure are meant. For example, where the Bible speaks of heaven being shut so that it does not rain, it is referring to the atmosphere below the clouds. Then again, where it speaks of the lights in the firmament of heaven, it means the upper spheres of outer space.

Some of Luther’s comments:

  • It is plain that, in Holy Scripture, the air in which we live is called “heaven” because Scripture speaks of “the birds of the heaven.” Likewise, it says that the heaven is shut up when it is not raining; likewise, it says that the heaven rains. All this happens in the air, not in the spheres of the moon or of the other planets.
  • Moreover, in the term “heaven” is included all that the philosophers divide into the eight spheres [i.e. the skies and outer space].
  • Just as a philosopher employs his own terms, so the Holy Spirit, too, employs his. An astronomer, therefore, does right when he uses the terms “spheres,” “apsides,” [etc.]. By way of contrast, the Holy Spirit and Holy Scripture know nothing about those designations and call the entire area above us “heaven.” Nor should an astronomer find fault with this; let each of the two speak in his own terminology.
  • But let me add this for the sake of the less learned: that what we call the “horizon” often occurs in Scripture under the designation “heaven.” Hence the entire firmament is called the heaven of heavens, wherein are included the heavens of all human beings; that is, their horizons. In this way we have here another heaven than those people have who are in France or in Italy. [8]

Modern translations of shawmah-yim.

However, increasingly scholars have changed the translation of shawmah-yim to indicate only the upper spheres. It is common now to find Genesis 1:1 translated as below:

NKJV: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The New King James Version changed “heaven,” which the KJV had, to “the heavens.” However, “the heavens” indicates only the upper spheres. My Oxford Dictionary of Modern English gives the following definition:

The heavens: the sky as the abode of the sun, moon, and stars.[9]

Therefore the NKJV, and all the modern Bibles that adopt this translation, contradict Luther. They agree more closely with Strong’s Concordance:

Strong, shawmah-yim: The sky (as aloft; the dual perh. alluding to the visible arch in which the clouds move, as well as to the higher ether where the celestial bodies revolve).[10]

Strong says that, as the “sky aloft,” shawmah-yim may “perhaps” refer to the upper atmosphere where the clouds are, but he would only be definite about its reference to the “higher ether,” or outer space. However, in Genesis 1:26, 28, and 30, the MB and many other Bibles translate shawmah-yim as “air” in the phrase “birds of the air,” which shows that shawmah-yim is not generally understood as limited to the higher ether.

People will have to decide between the Matthew Bible (and the older versions that retain “heaven”) and modern Bibles that have “the heavens.” For many reasons, especially as set out in Part 2 of The Story of the Matthew Bible (due for publication before the end of 2020 if things go as planned), I trust Luther and the Matthew Bible. On the other hand, I have learned to be cautious about the modern translations, and also about Strong. I discuss Strong’s unorthodox treatment of the Hebrew sheol (hell) in my paper on Hell, and show how he and modern scholars have significantly changed foundational doctrine.

The New Matthew Bible

In the interest of clarity, in the NMB I am planning to add Luther’s teaching to Rogers’ note on Genesis 1:6. It is important to establish at the beginning of the Bible the full sense of “heaven,” and to counteract modern influences. My comment will be in square brackets, which readers of the October Testament will recognize as the format used there. Below is the note I am currently considering:

John Rogers note on Genesis 1:6: Firmament, or heaven. Psalm 136:5 and 8:3. It is a Hebrew word and signifies thrusting forth or spreading abroad. [Luther>In the Scriptures heaven means the entire expanse of air, sky, and outer space that extends from the surface of the earth upward: the horizon. It may also refer to any part of this expanse; e.g., birds of heaven means the birds of the air, while stars of heaven refers to the upper spheres.]

R.M.D., October 2020

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[1] There are small differences between the 1537 and 1549 Matthew Bible. I use the 1549 version.

[2] In verse 2, I updated “void” to “without form,” which is also how the KJV had it. “Void” was used here in an obsolete sense meaning formless or featureless. Also, I updated “the deep” to “the deep water,” to make it clear. In English “the deep” literally meant “the deep water,” which appears to accord well with Luther and the Hebrew. In verse 6, “asunder” was also updated to “apart.”

[3] Luther’s lectures on Genesis comprise volumes 1-8 in the American edition of Luther’s Works. Here I draw from pages 3-48 in volume 1.

[4] At page 31 Luther wrote, “it cannot be denied that, as Moses says, there are waters above the heavens; but I readily confess that I do not know of what sort those waters are. Scripture mentions them nowhere else except in this passage and in the song of the three lads [Daniel 3:60 in the LXX]. We cannot establish anything certain concerning all similar matters, such as the heaven in which the angels and God dwell with the blessed.”

[5] Luther’s exact words were, “water and abyss and heaven are used in this passage for the same thing.” (LW, Vol. 1, p.9) He also explained that the Hebrew noun for “heaven” is derived from the word “water,” and therefore denotes something watery, or which has a watery nature (Ibid., p.23). His understanding was that if there were no sun, which dries the air, the atmosphere would be much wetter than it now is.

[6] Ibid., 6, 8, 24.

[7] One question that remains in my mind is whether the mysterious waters above the firmament (v.7) could in some contexts be included in the term “heaven.” Unless I have misunderstood, Luther is inconsistent in that usage. The Scripture might also use the term inconsistently, with the reference to be derived from the context.

[8] LW, Vol. 1, pages 29, 29, 47-48, and 31 respectively.

[9] I use the Canadian edition of the Oxford Modern English Dictionary. I should note that Tyndale, in his Old Testament glossary, indicated that “firmament” meant “the skies.” My guess is that he meant it in the sense that Luther described it as “the horizon.” In this sense it is the “visible arch” called the skies but does not exclude the air in which we move and live.

[10] I have the popular Welch’s edition of Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.

The Age of the Earth: Two Ancient Charts as Set Forth in the Matthew Bible

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When John Rogers compiled the 1537 Matthew Bible, he included a wide variety of biblical information, guides, and study helps. One interesting feature in the front pages was two charts that compared two different calculations of the age of the earth. People who have the Hendrickson facsimile of the 1537 Matthew Bible will find the charts on the bottom of the last page just before the book of Genesis.

The first chart contained the calculations of the Hebrews, following the Hebrew Bible. The second chart set out the calculations of Eusebius and other “Chroniclers,” who were not identified and who, I am told, based their calculations on the Septuagint. I have adapted the charts for a table format and present them below. The English is gently updated. I also updated both charts to show the number of years passed since the coming of Christ as 2,020 years instead of 1,537 years.

The Hebrews arrived at an age of the earth which, to this present year, would make the world 5,972 years old. According to Eusebius’s calculations, however, the earth is now 7,190 years old.

Because the figures in the Matthew Bible were in Roman numerals and were often blurred due to the imperfect inking process, they were difficult to make out. There might be errors. However, I carefully compared my 1549 Matthew Bible with my 1537 facsimile and I believe the tables are correct.

Neither of these charts tallies exactly with Bishop James Ussher’s chart, which, according to a Wikipedia article I read, dates the earth as presently 6,060 years old. There are also other modern calculations, which disagree minimally.

From the Matthew Bible:

A brief review of the years passed since the beginning of the world
to this year of our Lord 2020,
both according to the reckoning of the Hebrews
and according to the reckoning of Eusebius and other Chroniclers.

© R. Magnusson Davis, September 2020

Recognizing Evil(1) Proverb 11:23, Evil Disquiets

Posted on by Posted in Proverbs
By R. M. Davis, October 2018

Their ways are so crooked, that whosoever walks therein, knows nothing of peace — Isaiah 59:8, Matthew Bible

Certain proverbs in the Matthew Bible stand out for their practical value. In this short series I want to look at some that distinguish the behaviors and attitudes of good and bad people – what they do, how they treat others, and what motivates them. This instruction assists us to judge the people we meet and to walk wisely in the world. The proverbs were meant to teach practical wisdom and prudence (Proverbs 1:2-3), and such teaching is part of it. These proverbs are Myles Coverdale’s translations from his 1535 Bible, which John Rogers then incorporated in the 1537 Matthew Bible.

But Coverdale’s lessons were soon lost when the Matthew Bible came under red pens. Here is a look at what happened.

Background

Since this is the first post of the series, I’ll give a little history here.

After the Matthew Bible was published in 1537, it was revised by Coverdale himself for the 1539 Great Bible. The chief purpose was to appease the Roman Catholics, who preferred the Latin Bible translated by St. Jerome. Coverdale restored many renderings of the Latin Bible. He also bowed to pressure to be more “literal.”

Then came the 1560 Geneva Bible. It was a wholesale re-write of Tyndale’s New Testament and the Old Testament of the Great Bible, by English Puritans living in Geneva. Their revision was characterized by a great leap to grammatical literalism. Also, sometimes they followed the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament from the 2nd century BC, where Tyndale and Coverdale had followed the Hebrew text — or vice-versa.

The Bishops’ Bible and the KJV were further, incremental revisions of the Scriptures we first received from Tyndale and Coverdale. The KJV followed the Geneva Bible quite closely, though computer studies show that the KJV New Testament is still 83% straight Tyndale from the Matthew Bible.

Literalism, the Latin Bible, following the Septuagint, or a simple preference for the familiar “old wine” of traditional doctrine, are only some of the influences that might account for some of the revisions to the proverbs that we will see in this series.

My intention is not to try to prove the Matthew Bible right and others wrong (though I unabashedly love the Matthew Bible). Even if I had a PhD in Biblical Hebrew, it would be a vain effort. Too much is ambiguous, too much lost in the mists of time, too much a matter of interpretation. I may point out problems I see with clarity, semantics, and so forth, but I know there is always room for disagreement.

Coverdale’s sources

Where did Coverdale get his translations? Who or what were his sources for his 1535 Bible? From his preface:

To help me herein, I have had sundry translations, not only in Latin, but also of the German interpreters [translators], whom, because of their singular gifts and special diligence in the Bible, I have been the more glad to follow for the most part, according as I was required [requested].

The most important influences were the German translators, Martin Luther and the Zurich Reformers. As to the Latin, Coverdale had Jerome and Pagninus. Also, while he was working on his Old Testament in Antwerp, he regularly met and consulted with that master linguist, William Tyndale. Tyndale could not be mentioned, however, because he was a banned author in England. I understand also that the Reformers often consulted with Jewish Old Testament scholars.

Proverb 11:23

Let us see now Proverb 11:23 in the MB, being Coverdale’s original translation. From it, we learn that just people desire and labour for peace and tranquility. However, ungodly people pursue “disquietness.” They may sow disquietness in a house, office, church, or society at large, but it struck me how relevant this is to what is happening nationally now in the USA, especially with opposition and media agitations to undermine duly elected authority.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines disquietness as “the quality or state of being disquiet; want of quiet; unrest; disturbance.” The OED sample quotations speak of disquietness in home or nation (“realm”). Do you see persons or groups who agitate for unrest, disturbance, insurrection? Who deliberately upset others? Understand: they are unjust, they are motivated by evil. Understand, and govern yourself accordingly. But only Coverdale gives that lesson here:

Proverbs 11:23

Wycliffe 1380 (From the Latin): The desire of just men is all good; (but the) abiding of wicked men is strong vengeance.

Coverdale 1535 and the Matthew Bible: The just labour for peace and tranquility, but the ungodly for disquietness.

Great Bible 1540:  The desire of the righteous is acceptable, but the hope of the ungodly is indignation.

Geneva Bible (1560 & 1599): The desire of the righteous is only good: but the hope of the wicked *is indignation.

(Geneva note: *They can look for nothing but God’s vengeance.)

KJV: The desire of the righteous is only good: but the expectation of the wicked is wrath.

NIV: The desire of the righteous ends only in good, but the hope of the wicked only in wrath.

ESV: The desire of the righteous ends only in good, the expectation of the wicked in wrath.

Wycliffe translated from the Latin Bible. In the Great Bible, we see a taste of its “old wine,” when Coverdale revised his own translation to follow the Latin Bible more closely. Coverdale’s “new wine” in 1535, his original translation, was the lesson that just people work for peace; they desire tranquility. Of course, they will not be perfect. But the thrust of their desire and deeds is for and toward this good. On the other hand, ungodly people want and work for disquietness. It is not just that they sometimes find themselves in the midst of an upset, get caught up in an argument, or are sorry because they said the wrong thing in a moment of anger. No. They intentionally labour to disturb. The idea is that very evil people will demonstrate a pattern of upsetting and disquieting, and this is deliberate.

However, it can be difficult to perceive and understand the purposeful nature of this evil. Perhaps most of us have difficulty recognizing it for what it is, even if the signs are manifest. Evil-doers are manipulative. They hide their purpose behind charm and falsehood. They divide and confuse with flattery and accusation, with fair words and foul. They posture, promise, and slander, mislead and deceive. In the case of personal abuse, a perpetrator shows one face to his victims and another to the world. In political insurrection, revolutionaries sow divisive rhetoric along with utopian lies. But this we must understand: despite the pious pretences, despite the show, where this pattern is, there is evil intent. And where evil has its way, there will be suffering.

This is a truly important teaching, but is rarely adequately addressed, so at the end of this article I give some resources that develop this and related topics.

Translation issues

There are many issues of translation that suggest themselves. I review several in a longer paper posted on Academia.edu, linked below, touching on such issues as loss of antithesis in some of the versions, why the KJV changed ‘hope’ to ‘expectation,’ etc. For this post, I just want to make a note on the verbs.

In Proverb 11:23, in the Hebrew text, there is no verb. In some contexts, Hebrew does not use linking verbs (‘is,’ ‘seem,’ etc.). If such is to be understood, it may be derived from word order. This was obviously suggested to the early translators who used ‘is.’ However, Coverdale in 1535, and the modern translators, understood a sense of movement or direction toward an end – albeit different ends – which they expressed by action verbs:

Coverdale (1535) and Matthew Bible: The just labour for peace and tranquility, but the ungodly for disquietness.

NIV: The desire of the righteous ends only in good, but the hope of the wicked only in wrath.

In expressing the sense of working toward the desired object, Coverdale drew out a primary meaning of the English word ‘desire’:

Oxford English Dictionary, ‘Desire’: that feeling or emotion which is directed to the attainment or possession of some object from which pleasure or satisfaction is expected.

So then, from this proverb in the Matthew Bible we learn that just people find their pleasure and satisfaction in peace and tranquillity. They therefore desire it, and will labour for their desire. However, we need to understand that there are people who find their pleasure and satisfaction in disquietness, and direct themselves to that end.

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Notes

(1) Quotations from modern Bibles are from BibleGateway.  For Wycliffe’s Old Testament, I use Terry Noble’s modern spelling edition.

(2) The Puritans were themselves agitators. See The Puritan Rejection of the Tyndale/Matthew Bible

(3) Read The Story of the Matthew Bible  for the fascinating history of this unknown Bible which formed the base of the KJV.

(4) If anyone is interested, I examined some translation issues in greater depth in this paper:

https://www.academia.edu/37597512/Recognizing_Evil_Proverb_11_23_-_Evil_Disquiets

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Resources

Pastor Jeff Crippen has developed a sermon series that examines evil in practice from a Christian perspective. His focus is abuse in the home or in the church, but he points out that evil operates essentially the same way everywhere. He uses a modern Bible that I don’t like, but the teaching is edifying:  Link to Sermon series