docphin5
Well-known member
There is a new translation of the New Testament called “The New Testament: a Translation” by David Bentley Hart which reveals an alternate meaning to what everyone has been told. This is exciting for me because I discovered this after comparing young’s literal translation to all other translations and reading the Nag Hammadi (gnostic texts from the first and second century C.E.) which provides additional context for Paul’s letters that few know about.
What few people realize is that translators have a tremendous power to shape the meaning during the process of translating from Greek into English. So they end up producing a translation that most people would want to BUY ($$) and read versus what it actually means. In the process Paul‘s original message is barely recognizable.
IMO, this vindicates Paul who has been blamed for absurd ideas like substitutionary atonement, depravity of humans, and eternal hell.
Per the review,
“Paul’s actual teachings, however, as taken directly from the Greek of his letters, emphasise neither original guilt nor imputed righteousness (he believed in neither), but rather the overthrow of bad angels. A certain long history of misreadings – especially of the Letter to the Romans – has created an impression of Paul’s theological concerns so entirely alien to his conceptual world that the real Paul occupies scarcely any place at all in Christian memory.
It is true that he addresses issues of ‘righteousness’ or ‘justice’, and asserts that this is available to us only through the virtue of pistis – ‘faith’ or ‘trust’ or even ‘fidelity’. But for Paul, pistis largely consists in [individual] works of obedience to God and love of others. The only erga, ‘works’, which he is anxious to claim make no contribution to personal sanctity, are certain ‘ritual observances’ of the Law of Moses, such as circumcision or kosher dietary laws.”
It also reveals that Paul talked a lot more about cosmic development through imperfect divine powers (eg, YHWH) than most people realize, much like the natural philosophers and gnostic Christians did when they spoke about the demiurge.
“The essence of Paul’s theology is something far stranger, and unfolds on a far vaster scale. For Paul, the present world-age is rapidly passing, while another world-age differing from the former in every dimension – heavenly or terrestrial, spiritual or physical – is already dawning. The story of salvation concerns the entire cosmos; and it is a story of invasion, conquest, spoliation and triumph. For Paul, the cosmos has been enslaved to death, both by our sin and by the malign governance of those ‘angelic’ or ‘daemonian’ agencies who reign over the earth from the heavens, and who hold spirits in thrall below the earth. These angelic beings, these Archons, whom Paul calls Thrones and Powers and Dominations and Spiritual Forces of Evil in the High Places, are the gods of the nations. In the Letter to the Galatians, he even hints that the angel of the Lord who rules over Israel might be one of their number. Whether fallen, or mutinous, or merely incompetent, these beings stand intractably between us and [the Most High] God [aka, the El]. But Christ has conquered them all.”
Reference
Everything you know about the Gospel of Paul is likely wrong
What few people realize is that translators have a tremendous power to shape the meaning during the process of translating from Greek into English. So they end up producing a translation that most people would want to BUY ($$) and read versus what it actually means. In the process Paul‘s original message is barely recognizable.
IMO, this vindicates Paul who has been blamed for absurd ideas like substitutionary atonement, depravity of humans, and eternal hell.
Per the review,
“Paul’s actual teachings, however, as taken directly from the Greek of his letters, emphasise neither original guilt nor imputed righteousness (he believed in neither), but rather the overthrow of bad angels. A certain long history of misreadings – especially of the Letter to the Romans – has created an impression of Paul’s theological concerns so entirely alien to his conceptual world that the real Paul occupies scarcely any place at all in Christian memory.
It is true that he addresses issues of ‘righteousness’ or ‘justice’, and asserts that this is available to us only through the virtue of pistis – ‘faith’ or ‘trust’ or even ‘fidelity’. But for Paul, pistis largely consists in [individual] works of obedience to God and love of others. The only erga, ‘works’, which he is anxious to claim make no contribution to personal sanctity, are certain ‘ritual observances’ of the Law of Moses, such as circumcision or kosher dietary laws.”
It also reveals that Paul talked a lot more about cosmic development through imperfect divine powers (eg, YHWH) than most people realize, much like the natural philosophers and gnostic Christians did when they spoke about the demiurge.
“The essence of Paul’s theology is something far stranger, and unfolds on a far vaster scale. For Paul, the present world-age is rapidly passing, while another world-age differing from the former in every dimension – heavenly or terrestrial, spiritual or physical – is already dawning. The story of salvation concerns the entire cosmos; and it is a story of invasion, conquest, spoliation and triumph. For Paul, the cosmos has been enslaved to death, both by our sin and by the malign governance of those ‘angelic’ or ‘daemonian’ agencies who reign over the earth from the heavens, and who hold spirits in thrall below the earth. These angelic beings, these Archons, whom Paul calls Thrones and Powers and Dominations and Spiritual Forces of Evil in the High Places, are the gods of the nations. In the Letter to the Galatians, he even hints that the angel of the Lord who rules over Israel might be one of their number. Whether fallen, or mutinous, or merely incompetent, these beings stand intractably between us and [the Most High] God [aka, the El]. But Christ has conquered them all.”
Reference
Everything you know about the Gospel of Paul is likely wrong
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