LandonWillis

Category: Languages

  • What Are The Beatitudes?

    Jesus started His Sermon on the Mount by calling several different groups of people blessed. We typically call this section of his teaching “the beatitudes”.

    But why?

    Well, in Matthew 5:3-11, in our English translations, He starts every sentence with the word “blessed”. In the Latin translation of the New Testament (the Vulgate), the word used is beati.

    From this Latin word, beati, we get the word “beatitude”, which we use to talk about this short passage.

    Well, what does beati mean?

    “Blessed” is certainly a good translation in the context of this passage. But, the more common translation of the Latin word is “happy” or “fortunate”.

    In fact, when the word “beatitude” first entered the English language, it could just mean “supreme happiness”. However, it very quickly developed a purely religious context.

    From beatus (another form of the word beati), we also get the name “Beatrice”. Naming your daughter Beatrice would be like naming your son Felix (felix is another Latin word for “happy”).

    And, even though the Sermon on the Mount was originally written in Greek, it seems that the Greek word used, makarios, could similarly mean “happy” or “blessed”.

  • The Millo

    In 2 Samuel 5:9 we read:

    9 So David lived in the stronghold, and called it the city of David. And David built all around from the Millo and inward.

    We see this term “the Millo” also mentioned in a handful of other places.

    So, what is the Millo?

    Well, that’s where this gets a wee bit complicated.

    We’ve got three verses and some archaeology that all help to give us some idea. First off, we have the verses 2 Kings 12:20 and 2 Chronicles 24:25 which both tell about the assassination of Joash, King of Judah:

    20 And his servants rose up and formed a conspiracy; and they struck and killed Joash at the house of Millo as he was going down to Silla.

    25 …his own servants conspired against him… and they murdered him on his bed.

    Because he was assassinated in his bed and in “the house of Millo” these verses seem to tell us that the king lived in the house of Millo.

    Remember that. We’ll come back to that idea in a moment.

    Next, let’s look at the final verse which helps us, 2 Chronicles 32:5:

    5 And he resolutely set to work and rebuilt all of the wall that had been broken down and erected towers on it, and built another outside wall and strengthened the Millo in the city of David, and made weapons and shields in great numbers.

    That verse is talking about King Hezekiah’s preparations to defend Jerusalem. Nestled in the middle of a description about how Hezekiah was fortifying the city, we can pretty safely say that the Millo was some sort of fortification.

    Now, let’s take a look at the archaeology that can help us out here.

    Not too long ago, an archaeologist in Jerusalem discovered what she thinks is the remnants of the Palace of David and the Millo. She discovered two different remains of connected buildings.

    The first, she called the Large Stone Structure. It’s shaped like a large palace, and thanks to some hints from the Old Testament, she thinks it might have been King David’s palace.

    The second, she called the Stepped Stone Structure. It’s connected to the Large Stone Structure and looks like a large wall bending inwards, like a rampart (you can look up pictures of the excavation; it looks neat). It seems to be some sort of retaining wall, something used to keep all the dirt and debris behind it from moving and shifting. She thinks that this retaining wall/fortification was likely the Millo.

    And remember how 2 Kings 12:20 mentions “the house of Millo”? Well, that archaeologist believes this is because the palace connected to the Millo could be called the house of Millo.

    There’s also another theory I read which makes the claim that the Millo might have been located a bit farther away, in an area known as the Gihon Spring.

    Also, many scholars think that “Millo” comes from the Hebrew word ml’, which means “to fill”. This might be in reference to filling with earth (like an earthen fortification), or some think it means the Millo had something to do with water (like, “to fill with water”).

    Overall, we don’t know exactly what the Millo was, but it seems very likely that it was some sort of fortification. Plus, it must have been in the city of David and was likely nearby, if not part of, the king’s palace.

  • Who Were The Sopherim?

    Over the course of thousands of years, Jewish scribes wrote copies of the Old Testament over and over again. Scholars have now split these thousands of years of scribal tradition into several different time periods.

    You’ve probably heard of at least one group that scholars have sectioned off: the Masoretes, authors of the Masoretic Text.

    The Sopherim (or Soferim), however, refers to the Jewish scribes who worked from around the 400s BC to around 200 BC.

    There is one good starting point that historians use though. Many simply say that Ezra the High Priest (of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah) was the first Sopher (singular of Sopherim).

    Then, scholars give the name of “Sopherim” to the next couple centuries of scribes also. This lasted until the Pharisees took over in the second century BC. Scholars give different names to the periods of scribes during the time of the Pharisees.

    So, what does Sopherim actually mean?

    Well, it’s the Hebrew word translated as “scribes” throughout the Old Testament.

    The word sofer also just means “to count”. Some people think this is because the Sopherim would count every letter in the Torah as part of their process to make sure they copied it precisely right.

  • Ophel

    In the book of 2 Chronicles, 27:3, we read:

    3 He [Jotham] built the upper gate of the house of the Lord, and he built the wall of Ophel extensively.

    So, what does Ophel mean?

    Well, it is obviously not a translation but rather just an English rendering of the Hebrew word עֹפֶל (pronounced something like “Opel”).

    The reason it’s not translated is because there’s a decent bit of debate as to what exactly the word means. There is, however, also a lot of agreement on what the term probably means.

    To give you a quick idea, one source I read described it this way:

    “an elevated, royal, administrative or religious acropolis of, specifically, a capital city“

    Let’s break this down.

    First, most scholars agree that it has something to do with the idea of being “elevated”. This is because when we see forms of the word “Ophel” being used in other parts of the Old Testament, it sometimes has a medical sense of “tumors” or “swelling” (see 1 Samuel 5:9 for one example).

    Most people take this to mean that when “Ophel” refers to a place, it’s talking about some sort of “swelling” area, such as a hill or a rounded fortification (or a lot of people say “a fortified hill”). This ties in with the definition above of “acropolis”. An acropolis is a high (elevated), fortified point in a city. You might have heard of the acropolis of Athens. If this theory is right, then an “Ophel” is basically just the Hebrew word for an acropolis.

    Next, the definition above says that it was probably a “royal, administrative, or religious acropolis”. This is because, first of all, an acropolis would generally serve one of those purposes. In other cities, an acropolis would usually be the seat of government (administrative/royal) and would sometimes have the most important temples (religious).

    But, there’s another reason for that part of the definition. According to descriptions of the location of Jerusalem’s Ophel given in the Bible, combined with modern archaeology, we can say quite confidently that the Ophel specifically referred to the ridge between the City of David (where David set up his citadel after conquering the fortress of Zion) and the Temple Mount. Some scholars though think that the term Ophel would have also included the City of David (administrative/royal). Others think it would have included the Temple Mount (religious).

    And some think that “Ophel” would refer to both mountains, plus the ridge between them. That would probably be the closest definition to being an acropolis. But, almost everyone agrees that the short ridge (a couple thousand feet long) between them is the Ophel of Jerusalem. Some archaeologists even found old fortifications there. That lends to the idea of it being a “fortified hill”.

    Now, in the earlier definition, there was one last sticking point. “of, specifically, a capital city”. 

    What does that mean? Weren’t we talking about some place in Jerusalem?

    Well, yes. But, we actually have two other examples of the word “Ophel” being used as a place name. Both times for a place in another capital city.

    The first is in 2 Kings 5:24:

    24 When Gehazi came to the hill, he took the things from the servants and put them away in the house. He sent the men away and they left.

    “Wait a minute”, you’re saying. “Ophel isn’t in that verse”.

    And you’re right. At least, in English. You see, the word translated “hill” in that verse is actually the same Hebrew word for Ophel. It’s just that translators decided to translate it here instead of just writing Ophel like they did in 2 Chronicles 27:3 at the start of this post.

    When you read 2 Kings 5:24, you might imagine that Gehazi meets Naaman’s servants on some random hill out in the country. But remember. We can probably translate that word accurately as “acropolis” or “fortress” or even “tower”. So, this “hill” is probably some sort of elevated place inside of the city of Samaria itself (you can get more context from the rest of 2 Kings 5 to see that they’re in Samaria).

    And, since Samaria was the capital of Israel, just like Jerusalem was the capital of Judah, the definition of “an acropolis of, specifically, a capital city” rings true.

    Plus, we also have a non Biblical, archaeological source that talks about an Ophel in the capital city of Moab, Dibon.

    In the end, Ophel is a somewhat mysterious word that is sometimes translated in your Bible and sometimes just left as “Ophel”. A good translation would probably be “acropolis”. But other good translations could be “hill”, “fort”, “elevated place”, and “fortified hill”.

    Nowadays, it’s a term used by archaeologists to talk about the ridge between the Temple Mount and the City of David.

    If you want a much more in depth and very interesting article about this subject, try https://armstronginstitute.org/907-what-is-the-ophel. I got a lot of my information from them and found it to be very well written.

  • What Is A Gentile?

    The word “Gentile” comes from the Latin word Gentes, which means “nations or tribes”.

    This goes back to a common theme throughout the Old Testament. Many passages refer to non-Jews by simply calling them “the nations” (in Hebrew, the Goyim).

    One example is Isaiah 49:6:

    6 He says, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
    To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the protected ones of Israel;
    I will also make You a light of the nations
    So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

    That line “I will also make You a light of the nations” could also be translated “I will also make You a light to the nations”.

    So, “nations” is sometimes just a catch-all term for all non-Jews.

    When Jerome was translating the Bible into Latin in the late 300s AD, he chose to translate “nations” as Gentes in most places. Over the centuries, this developed into the English word “Gentile”. And you can even sometimes use it to refer to a non-Christian nowadays.

  • Eucharist

    “Eucharist” is another name for the Lord’s Supper, also known as Communion.

    It comes from the Greek word eukharistia (εὐχαριστέω), which literally means “thankfulness” or “gratitude”.

    This refers back to what actually happened during the Last Supper (Luke 22:17-19):

    “17 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks (eucharistēsas), He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves…19 And when He had taken some bread and given thanks (eucharistēsas), He broke it and gave it to them, saying…”

    So, the Lord’s Supper is a “giving thanks” meal. And that’s why the term Eucharist is commonly used to describe it.

    Plus, as a fun language tidbit, the modern Greek language gets a word from this. The Greek word Eυχαριστώ (pronounced something like “ef-ha-ree-sto”) means “thank you”.

    If you’re ever in Greece and want to tell someone thank you, just remember the word “Eucharist” and try to say it with a Greek accent. You’ll probably end up with something close to “ef-ha-ree-sto”.

  • Grammatical Error In The KJV?

    In Matthew 16:13, the King James Version reads:

    13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

    This is clearly different from other English translations, such as the NIV:

    13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

    The major difference is that the KJV uses the word “whom”, while every other English translation (including the New King James Version) uses “who”.

    Who vs. Whom

    Now, if you’re like most people, you’ve got no clue when to actually use “whom” in a sentence, and you probably don’t really care.

    So, to give you a really easy way to figure it out, there’s one quick little test you can use.

    If you can restructure the question as a statement, using the word “he”, then the correct word is “who”. And if you can use the word “him”, then “whom” is correct.

    As an example:

    You can look at the sentence “Who said that?”. We can rephrase it as a statement: “He said that.”, so the word “who” is correct in that sentence.

    Then, we can look at the sentence “Whom did he hit?”. We can rephrase that as “He hit him.”, so the word “whom” is correct.

    If you want to get into the fancy grammar terminology, this is because “who” is in the subjective case, and “whom” is in the objective case.

    Whom in the KJV

    So, back to the KJV.

    Let’s apply this quick test we just learned to the translation of Jesus’ question in the KJV.

    “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?”

    First, let’s just drop out the appositive, “Son of man”, to make this sentence a bit easier to handle:

    “Whom do men say that I am?”

    We can restructure this sentence as “Men say that I am he.” (If you’re confused about why it’s correct to say “I am he” but not “I am him”, just trust me on it. It’s due to something called a “predicate adjective”, which has to match the subject in case.)

    Well, according to our test, since “he” works in the sentence but not “him”, we should use the word “who”.

    So, why does the KJV say “whom” when that’s grammatically incorrect?

    Pretty much, in some other languages, including Greek and Latin, there’s something called the “accusative plus the infinitive”. This is a grammar rule that sounds very foreign in English but is entirely normal in Latin and Greek.

    To give you an example of how the “accusative plus the infinitive” works, look at the two following English sentences:

    (normal sentence) “Who do men say that I am?”

    (accusative plus the infinitive) “Whom do men say me to be?”

    In the original Greek, a literal translation would look closer to the second option. And, this would fit with our rule from before because we could reword it as “Men say him to be…” It sounds really weird in English, but it technically is grammatically correct.

    So, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “whom” could sometimes be used in the way that the KJV uses it, because of influence from both Latin and Greek. Specifically, it says that the use of whom is a “partial imitation of the accusative [plus the] infinitive construction in the biblical source”.

    And Matthew 16:13 is not the only place that the King James Version uses whom like this. You can also find it in places like Mark 8:27 and Luke 9:20.

    In the end, it is technically a grammar error to use whom in the way shown in the KJV. But, it seems like it was an intentional error, where they just wanted to give a weird sounding, somewhat literal translation.

  • What Is The Septuagint?

    You’ve likely heard about the Septuagint before. But what is it?

    Well, it’s the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

    Back when Alexander the Great was off conquering the known world, he didn’t neglect to seize the region of Israel. In the years following Alexander the Great’s death, his generals set up their own kingdoms.

    One of these kingdoms was the Ptolemaic Kingdom. It controlled much of Egypt and the territory of Israel. But remember, this new kingdom was ruled by Greeks, the descendants of Alexander the Great’s generals and officers.

    So, as this kingdom grew, the Greek language became more and more important in the area, even for the local Jewish population.

    Soon enough, the Greek-speaking Jews had a problem: they wanted to worship God and read the Holy Scriptures, but they couldn’t. The Scriptures were all in Hebrew, not Greek.

    Now, there is a very famous story about what happened next. I’ll explain this story, but just know: this is almost certainly hyperbole or even outright fiction.

    The story goes like this. King of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, son of one of Alexander’s generals, was consulting with the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. This librarian asked Ptolemy to send for some Jews from Jerusalem who could translate the Old Testament (not yet called the Old Testament) from Hebrew into Greek. So, Ptolemy did just that.

    Once the Jews heard the request, they selected from amongst themselves six men from each of the twelve tribes. Then, these 72 men (6 X 12 = 72) headed off to Alexandria in Egypt. When they arrived, Ptolemy separated each of the men into separate rooms and asked each one to translate the Torah into Greek (i.e. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).

    And as the story goes, each of these 72 men completed their work in exactly 72 days, and every single translation was entirely identical.

    It is for this reason that we call the Greek translation of the Old Testament the “Septuagint”, from the Latin word septuaginta, which means “seventy”. This is in reference to the 72 scholars who completed their work in 72 days. (And yes, apparently whoever started calling it the Septuagint just decided to round 72 down to 70 to make it sound nicer).

    Again, that is the story told about what happened. Is it true? Probably not. Is it partly true? Possibly.

    What we do know for sure is that the Septuagint first came about in the 3rd century BC. As far as we can tell, this was the first ever major attempt to translate the Scriptures (or any religious text for that matter) into another language.

    Due to lots of different reasons, the early church relied heavily on the Septuagint instead of the original Hebrew Scriptures. This makes sense because many early Christians were Greek-speaking Gentiles.

    In fact, when Jerome was translating the Bible into Latin in the late 300s AD, it was very surprising that he translated straight from the Hebrew into Latin. Most translators of the time saw the Septuagint as an equally inspired work of God, so they translated from the Greek into Latin.

    Overall, the Septuagint is just the general name for any ancient copy of the Old Testament that is in Greek. It’s got a fun story behind the name (septuaginta = 70). And it was the most common translation of the Old Testament for the first few centuries of the church.

  • The Four Songs In Luke’s Gospel And Their Latin Names

    When reading through the first two chapters of Luke, you’ll notice four separate times when people (or angels) break into song.

    Each of these songs is typically known by its name in Latin. This is because the Catholic Church pretty much only used Latin translations of the Bible for a long time. And they’re the ones who included these songs as commonly sung hymns.

    Mary’s Magnificat

    Now, the first one, which you’re likely most familiar with, is Mary’s song: the Magnificat.

    Why is it called the Magnificat? Well, in the Vulgate (the Latin translation of the Bible prepared by Jerome in the late 300s AD) the first word of Mary’s song is Magnificat.

    In Latin, Magnificat means “it magnifies”. It comes from the words magnus, meaning “great” and facere, meaning “to make”.

    So, “to magnify” is literally “to make great”.

    Luke 1:46 reads:

    46 Et ait Maria: Magnificat anima mea Dominum 

    46 And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord

    Zechariah’s Benedictus

    Next, we see the song of Zechariah.

    The first word of his song in Latin is Benedictus.

    Benedictus means “blessed” and itself comes from two other Latin words, bene, meaning “well”, and dictus, meaning “said”. So, it literally means something like “spoken well of”. But we normally just translate it as “blessed”.

    His song begins in Luke 1:68:

    68 Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel, quia visitavit, et fecit redemptionem plebis suae

    68 “Blessed is the Lord God of Israel,
    For He has visited and redeemed His people

    The Angels’ Gloria In Excelsis Deo

    When the angels are announcing the birth of the Savior to the shepherds, they make a quick statement/song that takes up all of one verse.

    In the Vulgate, this song starts with the phrase Gloria in altissimis Deo. As you can tell, that’s slightly different than the popular title of the song: Gloria In Excelsis Deo.

    So, why the difference?

    Well, it seems that there was a certain other Roman Christian who lived a few decades before Jerome compiled the Vulgate. This Christian (some speculate it was Hilary of Poitiers) decided to translate the Greek word hypsístois (meaning “highest”) as excelsis.

    And that’s a plenty good translation. Excelsis does mean “highest” in Latin. But, when Jerome translated the Greek texts a few decades later, he decided to translate it as the Latin word altissimis, which is another word for “highest”.

    In the end, the slightly older translation ended up sticking, so that’s why we still call this song Gloria In Excelsis Deo and not Gloria In Altissimis Deo.

    Luke 2:14 reads:

    14 Gloria in altissimis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

    14 “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

    Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis

    Finally, when the baby Jesus is presented at the temple, a man named Simeon breaks into a song praising God.

    The Latin translation of his song starts with the words Nunc dimittis servum tuum, which literally means “now you dismiss your servant” or “now you send away your slave”.

    This song starts in Luke 2:29:

    29 Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace

    29 “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace,
    According to Your word

    Conclusion

    So, we’ve got four famous songs in the first couple chapters of Luke’s Gospel. All four of them are commonly known by their Latin names: the Magnificat, the Benedictus, Gloria In Excelsis Deo, and Nunc Dimittis.

  • Alamoth And Sheminith

    In 1 Chronicles 15:20-21 we read:

    …Maaseiah and Benaiah were to play the lyres according to alamoth, 21 and… Jeiel and Azaziah were to play the harps, directing according to sheminith.

    So, what on earth do Alamoth and Sheminith mean?

    Well, if you’ve got footnotes in your Bible, you might see a note on both these words which says something like “probably a musical term”.

    Or, in other words, we’ve got no clue what they mean. But they’ve got something to do with music.

    Plenty of scholars have taken some pretty solid guesses about what they mean though.

    Alamoth

    First, Alamoth.

    It likely comes from a word meaning something along the lines of “young, unmarried women”.

    So, a lot of people take this to mean that Alamoth refers to the pitch of the lyres. Specifically, soprano. Like the pitch of a young woman’s voice.

    I read another source describe Alamoth as probably sounding like a bunch of girls laughing.

    Alamoth also appears in the heading to Psalm 46.

    Sheminith

    Sheminith is even more difficult to nail down than Alamoth.

    It seems to come from the Hebrew word shaman, which could mean either “eight” or “dripping fat/oil” (don’t ask me why it means both those things).

    So, most scholars apparently think that Sheminith means “eighth”.

    If that’s correct, it might refer to an eight-stringed harp/lyre. However, others think it is a reference to a specific note, like how the word “octave” in English just comes from the Latin word octo, also meaning “an eighth”.

    I saw one source that suggested Sheminith was meant to stand in contrast to the soprano of Alamoth; so, it specifically means a note “one eighth (one octave) below the tenor”. In other words, bass.

    But, there are also potential connections between the definition of “dripping fat/oil” and Sheminith. Overall, nobody really knows for sure what these words mean.

    And Sheminith also appears in the headings of Psalm 6 and Psalm 12.