Some more info on the
Matthew 11:12 verse, this posted in the Comments section to the above dogemperor piece,
originally posted on
Daily Kos on 9/24/2008:
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And some additional commentary re Matt. 11:12 (0+ / 0-)
In the link I posted to this on Dark Christianity @ LJ, an astute poster with access to a Greek New Testament has noted
just how badly the NIV skews things:
The Greek (transliterated into the Latin alphabet) is:
apo de ton hemeron Ioannou tou Baptistou heos arti he basileia ton ouranon biazetai, kai biastai harpazousin auten.
Literally, it translates:
"From the days of John the Baptist until this point the kingdom of the heavens is being violated/having violence done against it, and the violent are snatching it."
First of all, there is no verb of "advancing" in the text. I have no idea where the NIV got that from. But the key word under dispute is "biazetai". It comes from a verb meaning "to do violence". The form here can be either passive voice or middle voice. If you take is as passive voice, it means that heaven is having violence done upon it. If you take it as middle voice, it means that heaven is doing violence on its own behalf. Grammatically, both are possible.
However...
That verb is not a positive verb. It doesn't really mean "to be forceful"; it's a lot stronger than that. It's a verb used to describe criminal action and wanton aggression. People who break laws are said to biazein the law. People who commit criminal assault are brought up on charges of biazein. Therefore, I would find it highly unusual to describe heaven as acting out biazein.
harpazein likewise carries negative connotations. It implies a certain greed. It does not mean "laying hold of" it means "snatching" usually "snatching greedily". It's a word used of robbers.
In short, although grammatically one could stretch the translation to mean something like the NIV version, when you look at what these words actually mean and how they were used, that passage looks a lot like a description of criminal activity, not a call to arms.
In other words--in the original Greek, the explicit connotation is of Heaven being the victim of a violent assault and battery or a robbery (to put it in modern terms), not of God Warriors marching off to battle.
Dominionist hell: it's not just for Sunday anymoreby
dogemperor on
Wed Sep 24, 2008 at 02:38:50 PM PDT
