If not, where did this concept originate?
Thanks!
Revelation 21 describes a vision of “the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God”:
Revelation 21 contains a description of a “New Jerusalem” which includes the following:
“The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl.”
(Rev. 21:21)
I believe that’s where the image comes from. The chapter says that the gates are guarded by angels, though, not by St. Pete, so I’m not sure where that comes from. It may have something to do with this quote from Matthew:
“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
(Matthew 16:18,19)
Revelation 21
Is the Giant Clam ever mentioned?
Don’t you guys preview?
We do, but these days it takes about 4 tries of about 3 minutes each to get a post through. Previewing also takes about 3 minutes to let you know it won’t let you through. One preview to check spelling is all that is practical.
The phrase “Pearly Gates” first appears in print in English in the 1850’s.
Took 'em a long time, eh?
"But I bet that ‘Pearl gates’ appears far sooner.
If I recall correctly, the actual Greek (or rather the earliest surviving ‘verified’ version when I was in college, many many moons ago) uses says the church would be built on ‘petra’ [bedrock] while Jesus tells Peter “You are Petros”, which has two meanins: it’s a Greek name (the cognate of ‘Peter’] and also means “a rock” - anything from a pebble to a boulder. It was a play on words of the type made throughout history in all major languages. *“Yo, Stallone, you may be ‘Rocky’, but I gotta build my church on bedrock” (no, Stallone, not in Bedrock. Sheesh! Try watching something other than Nick at Night and the Cartoon Channel, willya?]) *
Also, IIRC, the oldest ‘verified’ Hebrew in Revelations at that time used either ‘drowr’ or ‘dar’ [the latter is derived from the former] ‘drowr’ meant freedom, liberty, “freedom of outflow” and other Similar concepts. It came to mean ‘pearl’ by analogy, due to the shimmering color of pearl. Its derivative ‘dar’ was used for ‘pearl’ but also meant ‘mother of pearl’ or ‘alabaster’ (and sometimes simply ‘white’)
Exact correspondences between the sets of meanings of words in different languages are not as common as we might like. I’m not an expert in Hebrew or Greek, but I have long been interested in the translation of ancient texts. If I have misremembered the original words, I’d welcome correction. Unfortunately the computer I’m on now is not configured to display the Grk/Heb character sets in the same coding as my reference CDs, so I can’t check it right now.
In my Ben-Yehuda Hebrew Dictionary, dar means ‘mother of pearl’, while deror means ‘freedom, liberty’ (also ‘swallow’, the bird). They are both derived from the same root (d-r-r), as KP correctly noted. Coincidentally, dar also means ‘house’, but that’s derived from a different root (d-w-r).
The cognates to this root in Arabic shed some light on the meaning.
Arabic durr means ‘pearls’.
The basic verb darra means ‘to flow copiously; to stream, flow, well; to be abundant, plentiful’.
A similar concept to flowing is darr ‘milk’, dirrah ‘teat, udder’, and midrâr ‘showering abundant rain (sky, cloud); spouting, pouring forth, welling out’.
The active participle dârr (similar to and corresponding to the Hebrew word dar) means ‘flowing copiously; productive, rich, lucrative, profitable’.
KP, are you saying that the original Greek text of Revelation* incorporated this Hebrew word? It said dar or deror instead of margaritês? OK, I’ll look it up myself. Here it is:
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~fisher/cgi-bin/gnt?id=2721
Revelation 21:21
[symbol]kai[/symbol] ‘[symbol]oi dwdeka pulwneV dwdeka margaritai[/symbol], ’[symbol]ana[/symbol] ‘[symbol]eiV[/symbol] ‘[symbol]ekastoV twn pulwnwn[/symbol] ’[symbol]hn[/symbol] ’[symbol]ex[/symbol] ‘[symbol]enoV margaritou[/symbol].
kai hoi dôdeka pylônes dôdeka margaritai, ana heis hekastos tôn pylônôn ên ex henos margaritou.
That’s definitely the Greek word for pearl (bolding mine). How come you brought up the Hebrew word, which doesn’t occur here?
*The name of the last book of the N.T. is Revelation (singular, no s).
Clam? Oyster! (But, whadda lollapalooza!)
Trinopus