To very roughly paraphrase, Revelation 5:13 says ‘I heard [every creature in Heaven and Earth] saying….’
Is there anything in the Greek of this that indicates whether the ‘saying’ verb (λέω) is in the first person plural (so ‘I heard [us] saying…’) or the third person plural (so ‘I heard [them] saying…’)? Or does the Greek construction not allow such a distinction? Would a reader of Revelation in the second century have seen John as being a participant in the stuff he describes, or merely as an observer of what others were doing?
Not knowing Greek I look at other versions for help and guidance.
The German Luther Bible reads:
Und alle Kreatur, die im Himmel ist und auf Erden und unter der Erde und im Meer, und alles, was darinnen ist, hörte ich sagen: Dem, der auf dem Stuhl sitzt, und dem Lamm sei Lob und Ehre und Preis und Gewalt von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit!
Which DeepL com translates as:
And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying: Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.
A random Spanish translation I found in the net reads:
Y a todo lo creado que está en el cielo, y sobre la tierra, y debajo de la tierra, y en el mar, y a todas las cosas que en ellos hay, oí decir: Al que está sentado en el trono, y al Cordero, sea la alabanza, la honra, la gloria y el poder, por los siglos de los siglos.
Which DeepL com again translates almost identically, and funnily archaic too:
And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying: Blessing, honour, glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.
And there are pages that compare different translations in English, like this one:
All the languages and versions I read seem to say “I heard them saying”. It looks like John is merely describing what he sees the animals do.
Now just out of curiosity: Why does this seem relevant to you? What (theological?) difference would it make if John was participating in the stuff he describes?
https://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/NTpdf/rev5.pdf has a nice, detailed explanation of each Greek word. As far as I can see, λέγοντας is a participle, which is marked for gender (masculine) and number (plural), but not for person. I think the “us” (masculine plural) reading might be stronger than the “them” reading because κτίσμα is neuter. The linked document has αὐτοῖς as neuter, as well, though the form could be masculine—it makes sense that it would refer back to the various κτίσμα-s.
It makes no theological difference to me, since it isn’t my religion. But I’m curious as to whether the formation of the Greek makes it clear that John is an observer versus a participant, or leaves it ambiguous, or perhaps wouldn’t have been seen as a real distinction in the second century.
I don’t put much faith in machine translation to capture nuance in ancient Greek texts, I’m afraid. For example - why is λέγοντας masculine here, when ‘creatures’ are neuter? I have no idea. Is it referring to some other group noun? There are clearly ‘some’ translations that phrase this as ‘I heard them saying’, but others don’t, and I wondered how ambiguous the Greek is.
A note: the Koine Greek of John’s Revelation is the obvious effort of someone writing in a language they aren’t comfortable with. It isn’t obvious from almost all translations because the translators/revisers want it to flow smoothly and put it in better English than it was in Greek. Grammatical concerns in individual verses abound.
David Bentley Hart, who tried to show the difference in the various levels of Greek in his translation (2017), has this for the end of chapter 5:
11And I looked, and I heard the noise of
many angels in a circle around the throne, and around the animals and the
elders, and their number was myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands,
12Saying with a loud voice, “The suckling lamb who has been slaughtered is
worthy to receive the power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and
glory and blessing.” 13And I heard every creature that is in heaven and on the
earth and below the earth and on the sea, and all the things among them,
saying, “To the one who sits upon the throne and to the suckling lamb be the
blessing and the honor and the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages.”
14And the four animals said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and prostrated
themselves.
You are correct in that. I am an interpreter myself and know the limits of this technology. It is just that I am lazy: I know German and Spanish and can vouch that the translation was correct enough, and both came from Greek originally. I just had to correct some punctuation marks, no words (and I found it funny that the machine tried to sound archaic).
So I tried to answer your question despite not knowing Greek by looking at the languages I personally know that translated the Bible based on the Greek version. I searched for Offenbarungen 5:13 and Revelaciones 5:13 and compared them to the English versions.
And it is not my religion either, and I wondered at the sense those texts do not seem to make, and how to translate something so weird. That is where my laziness came into play and I went the machine way. Which surprised me as better than I thought.
Is the Greek Bible we are talking about the septuaginta, the Bible 70 or 72 scholars translated independently from one another and still came up with the same result, word for word, according to myth and legend, inspired by the Holy Spirit? Or are there other canonical Greek translations apart from that one? Is improving the weak Greek not correcting Godott herself? Is that sacrilege? Excuse my very peripherical knowledge of the Bible, I may be talking crap, but I am astonished about this obscure interest in archane linguistic details.
The Septuagint is a translation of the Tanakh, aka. Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. In fact, the Septuagint proper only translated the Torah aka Pentateuch, i.e. the first five books of the Bible. But subsequent revisions and translation efforts for the rest of the Tanakh are often lumped in.
The mythology you cite is about the Torah translation. It is generally accepted as false, coming from a letter written in 150–100 BC. The initial translation is known to date from the 3rd Century.
All of the books of the New Tesatment were originally composed in Koine Greek.
(There is reference in one early letter of a Matthew gospel that was written in Aramaic first, but that gospel does not correspond with our current Matthew gospel. The gospels didn’t get their current names until later.)
I’d be interested to hear more about this, if you’re inclined to share.
ISTM that there are three options - the Greek is clear that the creatures are saying this, or it’s clear that John and the creatures are saying this, or it’s ambiguous in the Greek.
Great question. They just don’t match up. It’s like “I heard it speaking and he said…” My first guess would be: a bad edit. When words don’t match their antecedents, 9 times out of 10 it’s a bad edit. But that might not apply here. So I asked Google… take it for what it’s worth:
In Revelation 5:13, the Greek text reads πᾶν κτίσμα (pan ktisma - “every created thing,” neuter) followed by the masculine participle λέγοντας (legontas - “saying”). This is a common, intentional feature of John’s writing in Revelation, known as a solecism (a grammatical inconsistency) or construction according to sense (synesis).
Here is why λέγοντας is masculine:
Grammatical Agreement with Meaning over Gender: While κτίσμα (creature/creation) is grammatically neuter, it refers to a collective group of personal beings (angels, humans, etc.) who possess the capacity to speak and praise. The masculine participle λέγοντας acknowledges the “personal” nature of these beings, prioritizing the meaning over the strict neuter gender of the noun.
Emphasis on the Subjects: By using a masculine plural participle, the writer emphasizes that the creatures are acting as agents of praise. Similar grammatical shifts happen elsewhere in the Book of Revelation (e.g., in Rev 9:20 and 1:13).
Focus on the Act of Worship: The masculine λέγοντας functions as an accusative masculine plural participle, pointing back to the collective, living, active agents within the creation that are worshipping.
In short, John uses a masculine verb form to reflect that the “creatures” are personal agents actively participating in worship, despite the grammatical neuter gender of the word ktisma.
For all we know, those are just guesses that sorta seem to make sense if you squint a little. Instead of just admitting “Our boy goofed,” exegetes would rather invent something to make it make sense.
Thanks very much for that. Solecisms/Synesis in Revelation appears to be an area of some debate. I guess I would tend to go for ‘Greek as second language’ over ‘had a deep theological motive’ unless there was good evidence, which I gather doesn’t exist.
That said, saying ‘the crowd rose to their feet’ or ‘has everyone washed their hands’ is understandable even if it isn’t textbook perfect English. It’s probably better than what I could come up with in French or Russian.
It’s definitely heresy. When the Greek was translated into the Latin Vulgate version, there was uproar and outcry.
When Tyndale translated the Greek NT into English centuries later, it was denounced by the new Church of England as heresy and King Henry VIII signed his death notice. Granted, that last had a lot to do with the fact that Tyndale’s marginal notes implied that kings were fallible and didn’t have a divine right to rule. With the creation of the printing press, though, people could afford books and having an English version of the Bible proved too great a feat to go away. Even though Tyndale himself was burned at the stake for his crime, by the time Elizabeth became queen things had calmed down.
Tyndale’s friend Miles Coverdale published a version of the Bible featuring his translation of the OT from Hebrew along with Tyndale’s NT. This was promptly plagiarized by Thomas Matthews for his version, which became the basis for the first official Anglican version, the Great Bible (called that for its massive size) which was chained to the lectern of every church in England. English bishops soon created a revised, portable version of that, known as the Bishops Bible.
And the Bishops Bible was the main source used in the revision known as the King James Bible. The NT of which was still more than 90% Tyndale’s work.
But that’s arguing from context, not the words in the page. Johanna quotes Google AI with a justification, but I don’t know that I find that a credible source. It’s plausible, though.