A New Testament Survey: The Romans, The Jews, and the Christians

By Dr. Roy Blizzard

The purpose of this book is to acquaint the student with the historical, geographical, political, and religious context that gave birth to the document that we call the New Testament or the New Covenant. This is a survey. If you have had a survey course, you know that this is the kind of a study where you give a cursory parasol to the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781648957697

Dr. Roy Blizzard

Roy B Blizzard, Jr. is a specialist on Israel and the Middle East. A native of Joplin, Missouri, Dr. Blizzard attended Oklahoma Military Academy and has a B. A. degree from Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma. He has a M.A. degree from Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, Mew Mexico, a M.A. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. in Hebrew Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. From 1968 to June, 1974 he was an Instructor of Hebrew, Biblical History, and Biblical Archaeology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Book preview

Preface

I’m proud to present to the general public this work that was originally taught in the ’80s and ’90s under the scholarship of Dr. Roy Blizzard in a publicly taught course entitled New Testament Survey. The following material was transcribed off several tapes that recorded this event live. Comments and questions from those in attendance have been preserved to answer possible questions the reader may ask while studying this material. I have done to the best of my ability, in conference with Dr. Blizzard, and in my own personal research and study, to spell the names of the individuals, cities, and Greek and Hebrew references correctly and consistently with present-day scholarship. If there are any problems with any of the spelling, the fault lies in my presentation and not in the original presentation of the material.

After listening to this material, and a great deal of Dr. Blizzard’s teaching, I felt that this was so important that I spent close to twenty years transcribing, when the time allowed, so that one day it could be published, and the general public would be allowed insights into this valuable and concise material that deals with the background to the New Testament, the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John, Acts, and the rest of the epistles. An appendix has been added, at certain points, to expand upon the discussion for the reader.

While at times the survey is brief, it is to the point and highlights several aspects of the biblical text with special consideration given to the teachings of Jesus and Paul in its original Hebraic context. I pray that God will guide all who read this material hoping and praying that you will be enlightened about the nature of God, his work in your personal life, and the guidance of both his Son and Spirit as to which direction your life should take.

Chapter One

Introduction

The purpose of this course is to acquaint the student with the historical, geographical, political, and religious context that gave birth to the document that we call the New Testament, or the New Covenant. This is a survey course. If you have had a survey course, you know that this is the kind of a study where you give a cursory parasol to the material. Instead of a deep, theological, and historical study, you’re getting a rather broad picture. That is what this kind of course is designed to be—just a survey. That’s not the way that I’m going to teach it. We will give special attention to the life and teaching of Jesus in its proper historical, cultural, and linguistical context. We then will look at this movement that centers around Jesus with him considering himself to be the center of a new movement that he calls the Kingdom. We want to pay special attention to it as we see it in its early years on Hebrew soil. Then we want to study the development of that movement as it embraces the Gentile world and moves to the West as a result of missionary activities of individuals like Paul, Barnabas, and others.

As we look at the document itself, we will be giving special attention to the author of each one of the documents, the date the document was written, and the content of the document. We will not necessarily be reading all of the document or giving any kind of an exegesis on any particular passage in the document, especially as we come to the epistles. What was the purpose of this, to whom was it written, why was it written, what is the central message, and the theme will be our focus. Then maybe we’ll look at some critical passages as we deal with some of the more difficult problems in each one of the books.

We’re going to be talking about not just the text but a historical and chronological survey of the text, looking at it in its chronological sequence as it develops, rather than as the books develop as they are listed in our New Testament text. Since it is a historical and chronological study, we’re of necessity going to have to go back into the centuries before the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth on the scene. The events that are recorded for us in the New Testament pick up something of not just the chronology but the history of the culture, what’s happening religiously, and what’s happening politically that perhaps will influence the events that we’re going to look at when we come to the actual text. Without knowledge of this background information, we’re not going to be able to understand the information or the events that we see unfolding in the text. Unfortunately, there is no one good text, like a textbook, to which I could refer you to for this course. I surveyed quite a number of them, and all of them were lacking at some point. They, in some cases, were too technical, too detailed, too tedious, and at other points, they were too simplistic. So rather than referring you to a single text, or using a single text as our textbook, I rather chose to put together my own course outline and to make a presentation from quite a number of different texts bringing to you what I thought would be the most important of the material that we had at our disposal.

The Early Years

From the Sinai Peninsula, near Egypt upward, it was known as the land of Palestine even up to a part of Syria extending into Mesopotamia. Today it deals with the countries of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and perhaps may have encompassed a southern part of the USSR, and then a large part of Turkey. Turkey was a part of Asia Minor, Greece, and then off of the map would be Italy. All of this is the territory encompassed in the Greco-Roman world of the time period, the first four centuries BCE (Before Common Era) and the first century CE (Common Era) that we’re going to be discussing in our studies.

Notice that the nations, or empires, that are involved in this five-hundred-year period that we call the period between the Testaments, or the silent years, that we see some seven, or maybe eight, different empires or nations with many different rulers. The Old Testament ends with the book of Malachi in its present form. I could have tricked you and said that it really doesn’t come to an end until the book of Acts because actually the four gospels fall into the time frame of what we would call the Old Testament. There can be no New Testament as long as the testator is alive.

The last book in the Old Testament is Malachi, and the date is around 400 BCE. It’s not until somewhere around 4 to 6 BCE that we’re into the biographies of Jesus and introduced to this person we know as Jesus of Nazareth and the beginning of what we call the New Testament. There is a four-hundred-year time gap there between the testaments. What happens in that historical period of time? What is the historical and political climate? What is going on in the world? Do these events that are going on in the world have any bearing or effect on events that are going to happen later on down the line?

In 400 BCE, what’s happening? What empire, what kingdom is the principle power in the biblical world at that time? We have a time when the Persian Empire is coming to an end, and the Greeks are beginning their ascendancy. Let’s project ourselves back into that historical period and come up with a few dates. Babylon, the great empire that had conquered the city of Jerusalem (the southern kingdom of Judah), carried away the people of Israel to Babylon. This great nation came to an end as a result of the conquests of Cyrus of Medo-Persia in 538 BCE. Who was the last king of Babylon? Nabonidus was technically, but his son Belshazzar was reigning in his stead. The events recorded for us in the book of Daniel relative to the fall of Belshazzar are describing those last moments in the history of the Babylonian empire. Cyrus of Medo-Persia becomes the first king of the Persian Empire. The Persian Empire, we say technically, begins in 538 BCE and extends to 332 or 333 CE with Alexander the Great. His father is Philip of Macedon (we’ll talk more about them later). The Greek period is from 332 to 167 BCE.

With the death of Alexander, what happens? His kingdom is divided among his four captains. Each is given a portion of his territory. Only two of them are going to be important to us: Ptolemies and the Seleucids. We’ll talk about the Greek empire under the Egyptian and the Syrian rule of the two of these four commanders of Alexander’s empire.

The Ptolemies and Seleucids fall into this Greek period. In 167 BCE, we have the Maccabean period, or the period of Hebrew independence. That’s from 167 to 63 BCE. In 64 BCE, we have the beginning of the Roman period. The Roman period, or the Herodian period, will be interjected because of its importance to us, especially with the birth of Jesus and then the events that follow afterward including the whole Herodian family. We could have also added the NT period, but that would take us out of the actual time frame in which we’re going to be working going up to 96 CE with the death of the last apostle John. Shortly thereafter, we have this movement of Jesus moving farther and farther to the west and the beginning of the Byzantine Empire. We’ll not go that far because it’s beyond the historical scope of the NT text.

Under Cyrus, of Medo-Persia, the Jews were given a great deal of freedom and were accorded many favors. Almost immediately, after Cyrus had conquered the Babylonian empire, he issued a decree to allow the Jews to return to Israel. He funded the whole expedition and allowed them to go back and rebuild the temple. He gave them assistance in his undertaking by giving them special monetary grants (Ezra 1:1–11; 3:7; 4:3–5; 5:13–14, 17; 6:3, 14; and Isaiah 44:28). A far as we can ascertain, the Jews were treated quite fairly by the Persians in both Persian territory and in Palestine.

When we are talking about Persian, what territory is it on our modern map that we are talking about? This would deal with the landmass known as Iran and Iraq or the land of Mesopotamia. The land around and between what is known as the Fertile Crescent: the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. This was ancient Persia. Naturally, they were not free since they were still subject to Persia. As long as they recognized the supremacy of Persia, and observed Persian law, they were not molested or abused in any way.

The Old Testament text ends about 400 BCE with the Jewish people in Judah still subject to Persia. They set out to return in 537 BCE (the decree of Cyrus was given in 538) and arrived in 536 where they immediately began rebuilding the temple. It was rebuilt and dedicated in 516 BCE. For over one hundred years, they remained subject to Persia with this situation continuing without any outspoken resentment on the part of the Jews until Persian power began to wane and came quite swiftly to an end with the conquest of Alexander the Great (333–332 CE).

During the time of Persian dominance of the biblical world, her armies advanced further westward than any conquering nation before. They advanced until they reached the Aegean Sea, the western boundary of Asia. Not content with this, they even crossed the Aegean to enter Greece, where they continued a light foothold for a short period of time. When they did that, they met their fiercest opponent, the Greeks. They challenged them, drove them out of Europe, and ultimately conquered all the territory that had once been held by Persia. This contest between the Persian Empire of the Orient and the western world of the Greeks was one of the most far reaching in all recorded history. What happens is that we have the confluence, here in his particular period of conquest, between the world of the Orient and the world of the west: the western world being the world of the Greeks. Had Persia won this conquest, think how different recorded human history would have been. Today, we would all be Arabs and praying to Mohammed. At another time in history, it almost happened again during the Islamic period.

Comment: Mohammed isn’t on the scene until later.

Mohammed isn’t on the scene until the seventh century, but he’s a product of this Oriental world—this oriental mentality. There is a great deal of difference between these two cultures in thought, thought patterns, language, language patterns, concept of art, literature, architecture, etc. It’s two completely different cultures who merge here into this contest that is won decisively by Greece. The influence of Greece is going to be felt over all the world of that day. Every nation with whom she comes into contact is going to be influenced by the Greek language, philosophy, art, and architecture, and the world will never be the same again.

Comment: The Greek culture had a high standard of military strength, didn’t they? They studied fighting techniques and weapons. Is that the reason they dominated?

No, as early as 600 BC, three hundred years before the time of Alexander, weapons that were used by the Greeks were also known in Babylon. Greek mercenaries fought with Cyrus and the Persian army. It was not just the weaponry that had anything to do with it. I think that it probably was much more complicated.

Comment: When I look at the Romans, much of their success was due to their military techniques and the study of them: their drilling, training, and the way that they went about combat. They were strong fighting people because of the tales of the last man. They were dedicated.

Dedication and determination are something quite different from the physical weaponry itself. I think that therein you have answered your own question.

The Greeks that were to influence world history so much that it began to emerge as a nation several centuries before the time of Alexander the Great. They occupied the southeastern fringes of Europe, some of the Aegean Isles, and this territory called Greece. Notice that today, we are dealing with countries such as Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania (none of them currently exist), but nonetheless this area and encompassing many islands. This will be a world well-known to Paul and others that are conducting missionary activities as the church began to move into the west into that area.

The very mention of the word Greek recalls some of the glorious achievements of these marvelous people. They excelled in almost every area of human activity. Ancient Athens was the intellectual center of the pre-Christian era. All the arts flourished and reached the heights of attainment unknown in previous history. Some have suggested that the Greek language was the most sophisticated language that has ever been developed. In philosophy, literature, sculpture, architecture, and other liberal arts, they made a contribution that has never been equaled by other peoples. There is beauty of the architecture of Rome, the magnificent buildings with the columns and the capitals (Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian), and the magnificent sculptures that are unparalleled in human history. There is something almost breathtaking about them even though they are two thousand years old. The art, sculpture, architecture of ancient Greece has remained unto this day largely unparalleled.

We’re dealing with a very highly developed and sophisticated culture in which not only did art and architecture triumph but thought, reason, philosophy, and religion. They gave us men such as Aristophanes, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These are all philosophers, great minds, that are still studied in the major universities and educational institutions the world over in spite of the fact that what they were saying was two thousand years ago. In the fourth century BCE, this culture, through the efforts of Philip of Macedon, and then later his son, Alexander the Great, was carried by these zealous disciples into the east and into the orient itself.

Philip of Macedon—Macedonia was one of the chief states of Greece. Philip was the king of Macedonia until his death in 334 BCE. Archaeologists believe that they have discovered the tomb of Philip of Macedon in Greece. His two great ambitions were to see Greece attain a prominent place of leadership in the world and to prepare his son to fulfill his dream. Both ambitions were achieved to quite a remarkable degree. Alexander was a man who was destined to affect the lives of all peoples from that day until this. He began his career in a very rigorous fashion. After his ascension in 335, he accomplished more in a brief reign of twelve years than any other man before him.

These busts of the emperors were remarkable likenesses. They were like photographs. Even on the coins, you have remarkable likenesses, though they won’t be as detailed as the lifelike image of the sculpture. The busts that we have of Alexander show him to be a handsome young man.

He was quite young when he succeeds to the throne at the age of approximately twenty-one years. In several decisive battles, he defeated the Thebans crossed over into Asia, met and defeated the forces of Durias of Medo-Persia in two famous battles, and then moved through Syria and Palestine on down to Egypt. On his way to Egypt, he went right through Palestine, which would take him by Jerusalem, which he took without any apparent difficulty. There is a tradition that he met outside Jerusalem a group of Jewish priests that impressed him so much that he greeted them special privileges for Jerusalem, the Holy City. One story has it that among the priests who met him, Alexander recognized one that had previously prophesied to him that he would conquer the world. Whether it’s more than a story, we don’t know, but it’s a story nonetheless. From Jerusalem, he went down to Egypt, which soon fell completely into his hands. On the northern shore of this ancient country, he founded a great city, and it was called Alexandria. It is a lovely port city in this area to this day. It was a city rich in history, both a history of the Hellenistic world plus a history of the Jews.

The most important event that took place at Alexandria, that would later affect the course of Jewish history, was the translation of the Hebrew Masoretic text into Greek. Tradition has it that this translation was accomplished by seventy learned Jews, and therefore the translation is known as the Septuagint which means seventy after supposedly the seventy learned Jews who worked on this translation.

The city still stands after having placed such a prominent role in the history of the world for the last twenty-three centuries. So enamored were the Egyptians of Alexander, they declared him Pharaoh and made him a king and a priest. Ancient Pharaohs were what we call priest kings. We see it not only in Egypt but in many places in the ancient world too. The ancient Egyptians were enamored by Alexander, and he became one of the kings of Egypt mentioned in the list of the kings called Pharaohs. Not satisfied, he took his armies back through Palestine and Syria and went on to meet Darius on the Assyrian plains. This was the decisive battle that ended the empire of Persia. At this point, all the territory belonged to Alexander. He continued his march eastward, finally moving into India itself. Think of what problems you would have of supplying an army with weapons, food, and maintaining it so far removed from its home base. The supply lines broke down and the soldiers began to rebel, and it is here that his career of conquest came to an end.

Alexander became vain, unreasonable, and began to drink to excess. Finally, he contracted a fever which brought on his death in Babylon in 323 BCE. He died at an incredibly young age, but, in a few short years, he made his mark on history in a way that no other person before or after has done. He was an unusual man certainty not without fault. He had been a student of the philosopher Aristotle and a passionate disciple of Greek culture, but the principal driving force behind him was one that had been instilled into him by his father. He believed that somehow and in some way he had almost a divine obligation to spread the Greek culture over the ancient world. Throughout his career, Alexander seemed to be partial to the Jews. He admired their excellent qualities and granted to them in Alexandria, as well as in other cities, the privileges of citizenship. Apparently, as long as Alexander was alive, they never were the victims of discrimination or persecution. Because of his own convictions, it is safe to conclude that he would have required of them to some degree to embrace Hellenistic philosophy. We know that many of them did. When we talk about Hellenistic philosophy, we are not talking about Hellenistic religion. We are talking about philosophy, literature, language, art, culture, etc.

By the first century of the present era, because of this kind of cultural context, that is by the perspective of architecture, art, and lifestyle, we see many of the Jews in Jerusalem embracing this type of culture. Especially is this true of the sect known as the Sadducees. It was against these people, their lifestyle, their philosophy of life that Jesus directs many of his sayings. After his death, the situation changed dramatically, and the Jews entered quickly into an era of some of the bitterest suffering in their long history.

When Alexander died in 323, at the age of thirty-two or thirty-three, his empire did not survive him very long, the reason being that there was no heir capable of managing it. No man was strong enough to succeed him and hold together this vast empire that he had molded. So what happened? His kingdom was divided among four of his generals: Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Cassander, and Seleucus. These divisions are usually called the west, or Greece proper; the northern, or the Armenian; the eastern, or the Syrian; and the southern, or the Egyptian. We are not interested in the western or the northern divisions since the Jews are not involved to any degree with either of these, but the Jewish people are affected by the other two. The Syrian, or the eastern section, under Seleucus lay directly north of the land that was called Palestine. The southern, or the Egyptian section, was under the Ptolemies. The Jews were sandwiched in between these two powers and were passionately converted by both these Seleucids to the north and the Ptolemies to the south.

Lysimachus held western Asia Minor, Cassander rules Macedonia and Greece, Ptolemy took Egypt, and Antigonus was the first of the commanders of Assyria but was taken by Seleucius I after the battle of Itsus in 321 BCE. Later on, the kingdom of Lysimachus is absorbed into the realm of the Seleucids. What is important for us to know is that the Seleucids and the Ptolemies were constantly at war with one another. This hostility between them kept the Jews right between the hammer and the anvil. The coastal plain of the Sharon along what is called the Via Marias, or the way of the sea, was the corridor along which these armies marched to war.

Ptolemy Soter was at first very severe in his treatment of the Jews. Later, he came to appreciate their good qualities and treated them with some degree of consideration. As a result, numerous Jews achieved places of authority and prominence. Soter was succeeded by Philadelphius, who likewise treated them fairly. This was the Philadelphius that built the great lighthouse Pharos at the mouth of the Nile. Even more significant was his erection of a great library at Alexandria. This library at Alexandria became the most important center for culture and learning in the Mediterranean world for several centuries. The Moslems burned it in the seventh century.

During the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphius, the Septuagint was completed in Alexandria. This was the translation of the Hebrew Masoretic text of the OT into the Greek language. Hellenism had come to dominate the Mediterranean world to the extent that many of the Jews, who were the Jews of the Diaspora (that being the one that happened under Nebuchadnezzar), had been out of the land for 250 years by the time of Alexander the Great to the extent that many of them had ceased to speak Hebrew and instead spoke the Greek tongue. Devout Jews, after the division of the kingdom of Alexander, began to realize that so much of their culture was being lost that they were basically what their language was. Their religion was what their language was. If their children were to continue in the religion and the heritage of their fathers, then it was going to be imperative that the Hebrew scriptures be placed into a language that they could understand. Herein we have a problem: we are dealing with two different language families, two different mentalities—the oriental mentality on one hand and the Indo-Germanic mind on the other. If you do not know this when you come to NT study, and NT exegesis, there’s going to be times when you’re going to be confounded, and you’re going to come up with the wrong answer.

What is the problem? We are dealing with two different language families. We are dealing with two different mentalities. We are dealing with this oriental mentality on the one hand, and we’re dealing with this Indo-Germanic mind of the western world, on the other.

So, what happens? It’s very important for you to know what it is that happens because if you don’t know this, when you come to the New Testament study and New Testament exegesis, there’s going to be times when you’re going to be confounded, and you’re going to come up with the wrong answer if you come up with any answer at all.

This is the period of classical Greek. Greek is not at all like the Hebrew language. The Greek language is very idealistic. It is beautiful and perfectly formed. There is a symmetry in the rhythm and flow of the language. The Greeks looked out and saw the world as it was and tried to change it to what they thought it ought to be. The Hebrew language, on the other hand, was very realistic as opposed to idealistic. They just took it for what it was and accepted it for what it was. The language was quite different in structure and style. The mental process of the people of the ancient orient was different from the world to the west which means that it is a very difficult to translate concepts and thought from a language that is so abstract into a language that is so reasonable or rational. In addition to that, the Greek language was constantly changing. It changed from one generation to the other very easily. The Greek of the time of Alexander, which is classical Greek, was not the same Greek as the Greek of the New Testament. Hebrew, on the other hand, is kind of a boring language. It was satisfied to stay the same: there has been little change in Hebrew in four thousand years. In fact, there has been more change in English in the last four hundred years than there has been in Hebrew in the last four thousand. The same is true with Greek. It was constantly changing.

What is the problem? The problem arises out of this fact: in the third century BCE, during the Hellenistic period, and the time of classical Greek, these seventy Jewish scholars, according to tradition, chose certain Greek words to convey certain Hebrew ideas. At that time, about 285 BCE, the meaning of the certain Greek words was fixed. While this was the Greek of the Septuagint, it’s not the Greek of the first century of the New Testament.

Comment: Was that Modern Greek in retrospect?

No, modern Greek is a different Greek.

Comment: So what was it?

They call it koine, but that is a prefabricated term that does not mean anything. Some Greek scholars will tell you that there is not such a thing as koine Greek. What we call koine Greek, we use to think, was a form of vernacular being the language of the common man on the street. It was a low form of Greek or bastasterized Greek. The simple fact of the matter is that it is not Greek at all. This is not Greek that we find in the New Testament. It is translation Greek. It is Hebrew that has been slavishly, literally translated into Greek.

If you want to know the meaning of certain Greek words that you find in the New Testament in the Greek text, and if you want to know certain ideas or certain cultural practices, you’re not going to find it in New Testament Greek dictionaries. So a dictionary, such as Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon, is not going to give you the answer. For that, you are going to have to go to Liddell and Scott’s Dictionary of Classical Greek, which unfortunately is not numerically indexed to anything unlike Thayer’s. To be able to utilize it, you have got to know at least enough of the Greek characters to be able to look up words. The important point for us to understand is that as we progress into the text itself, and although it may look like Greek on the surface, it may be a translation into Greek. We may look in a Greek dictionary, a lexicon, in trying to find the answer to our questions, but we aren’t going to find it there because we’ve got to go all the way back to the classical Greek in the third and fourth centuries BCE and go into, not just the language, but the religion, the culture, and the heritage of the Hebrew people.

Comment: Did they devise some terms then? Here we have the classical Greek of the seventh century BCE, and that is when the Septuagint was translated wasn’t it?

Comment: I am trying to get my mind to what happened during the time of Jesus and shortly after when they tried to do this translation. Did they make terms or create new terms?

What translation are you talking about?

Comment: I am not talking about a translation but in the language, the first versions of the Greek Bible in the New Testament. Is that what you would call koine Greek or what we use as a slang Greek?

Again, I do not like to use the term koine Greek.

Comment: What would you say then?

I would call it first century or second century Greek.

Comment: I am trying to see what happened. They were not using classical Greek. Did they devise some new form?

Yes, new forms and new moods. They were not even thinking about Hebrew. In the third century BCE, when the Hebrew text is translated into Greek by these Greek scholars, the meaning of those Hebrew words is fixed by the utilization of certain Greek words that try to convey the same idea. Greek words might also convey many other ideas that go beyond the culture, or the theology, or the abstractness of the Hebrew world. Example, the Greek word hepataso from the basic root word taso is translated into English as submit or submission. It is used in many places in the New Testament especially in the writings of the apostle Paul. Let the women be in submission to their husbands in all things… That one word is used to translate eleven different Hebrew words, and each one of those words has a different meaning in Hebrew. If you want to know what submission means, you have got to know what all eleven of those Hebrew words mean. You cannot look at this word in its Greek context because in its Greek context, it may be used in some way different than what their trying to get across from a Hebrew religious and cultural perspective. That is the reason why it’s so dangerous just working with an English translation and not having a good knowledge of the language so you can look these things up. When you try to formulate doctrine and theology and then turn around and impose it off on a group of people, it is possible that your whole theology is wrong. In many instances, it is.

Comment: My husband said that he thought he heard the Hebrew had fewer words than other languages, such as Greek, and so it is more a pictorial type of a language. It makes me wonder why they would take eleven Hebrew words and put this one Greek word there. Is that kind of a thing true? In Hebrew, why would you have eleven words when in Greek, you would have many more? What is Hebrew in comparison with Greek?

Very abstract! Why did they choose just one Greek word? Because Hebrew is so abstract that if you want to convey all of the things that were behind this particular concept in Hebrew, you’d have to be using a whole paragraph of Greek words to do it; therefore, they would just frequently pick out the one Greek word that would best convey best this idea of concept. The problem is that many times it does not convey it. Let me give you a specific instance. In Matthew 5:43, this whole passage, beginning with verse 33, has to do with an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and the concept of not resisting evil. Whoever hits you on one cheek, turn to him the other. If somebody takes your coat, give him your cloak also, etc. This is tough stuff for us because this is not our nature. If someone comes along and hits us on one side, we want to turn around and hit him. However, notice this, this is the catch here in verse 43, You’ve heard it that it hath been said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy’ but I say unto you love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you. Pray for them that despite fully use you and persecute you that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven.

We all have to be honest and admit that it’s not easy to love our enemies. It is especially difficult to turn the cheek when someone comes up and wants to hit you on one of them. When you look at this word in the Greek, its ekthros, no. 2190. We are going to Thayer and look up ekthros. It says, …hate, someone that hates you. The only thing that you are going to do in reading Thayer is to find out that it is someone that hates you; however, if you go to the classical dictionary of Liddell and Scott and look up ekthros, you’ll find something really interesting. It says, "…hates, hateful person, someone hating, hostile, an ekthros is one who has been a theolos (brother) but is alienated. A polemois means one who is at war with you (that’s a completely different word). A dusmenis is one who has long been alienated and refuses to be reconciled." (p. 748)

Comment: ekthros means all three of those?

No, ekthros means a brother who has been alienated. A polemois means somebody is at war with you, and a dusmenis is someone who has long been alienated from you and refuses to be reconciled. Therefore, when Jesus comes along and says, Love your enemies, he’s not talking about someone who is at war with you. He is not talking about somebody who is out to get you. He is not talking about someone who has been long alienated from you and refuses to be reconciled. He is talking about a brother who has some hostility between you and him, and it needs to be taken care of. How do we know that? In Jewish law, it says that if somebody is going to kill you, you are to anticipate it and kill them first. It does not say to turn the other cheek. It says that if you know that someone is going to kill you, be quick and kill them first. It is called justifiable homicide. Under Jewish law, a man is under an obligation to protect his own person, that of his family, and property. Anyone who refuses to do so is worse than a pagan.

Comment: So you’re basically saying that the translators didn’t know the cultural heritage of the words and the meaning of the words that they were translating.

What translators are you talking about?

Comment: Anybody that is trying to translate from Hebrew into another language.

No, the guys that translated the Hebrew into Greek knew exactly what they were talking about.

Comment: Did they know the other side of the coin?

They knew the other side of the coin because these are Hebrew scholars. They knew exactly what they were talking about. Where the problem comes is when our modern-day scholars try to translate from the Greek into the English, and they do not know anything about Greek or Hebrew. They think that they are Greek scholars, but they do not know anything about the history or the culture. They know the mechanics. The interesting thing is that sometimes they will translate it right in the Old Testament and get it wrong in the New Testament when it’s a quote from a passage in the Old Testament.

Comment: By modern, are you saying anyone after the Septuagint?

I’m talking about your modern-day scholars from the time of the translation of the King James Bible down to today. The first Bible that was translated into English was translated in the sixteenth century. Wycliff’s translation into Middle English was developed from approximately 1382 to 1395. Then, of course, the King James was 1611, and that is the one that we basically focus in on because it becomes the authorized version with the formal seal or stamp of approval of King James I of England. This is why we call it the King James authorized version of the Bible. What you might not know is that absolutely none of the most ancient translations, of the most ancient manuscripts that we have of the Greek text, had been discovered in 1611. Not only that, but an interesting section is found in the old Jewish Encyclopedia published by Singer that was published in 1904–1905. You read under Bible, the history of, that none of these ancient texts had been discovered when the King James Bible was translated in 1611, and they go on to say that even if they had been discovered that it was doubtful that there were any scholars capable of utilizing these materials for translation purposes.

English translations are bad, really bad. The Septuagint, from the Hebrew text, is an exceptionally good translation. Interestingly enough, the Latin Vulgate, translated by Jerome, is also a much better translation than any of the English translations.

Comment: What about the Spanish King James?

It is even worse because you have gone not from Greek and Hebrew into Spanish, you’ve gone from a bad English translation into Spanish. There are a lot of errors.

Comment: Roy, I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it two hundred times, God wouldn’t let that happen.

That is the old, easy out. Who said that God allowed it to happen in the first place? Why do we want to blame all of this on God when we are the ones who did it? God was the one who gave the injunction through all the rabbis to study. We are the ones who translated it, and we are the ones who need to take the responsibility for it. God did not have anything to do with it. The reason we know this to be truth is because if he did have something to do with the translation, it would be right.

Comment: I was reading recently that the founders of Yale and Harvard University believed that it was absolutely necessary to know Hebrew to understand the Bible and did everything except require it for attendance and graduation from there.

Did you know that the first commencement address was done in Hebrew?

We cannot overemphasize the importance of this translation. However, we also cannot overemphasize the importance that this is classical Greek and you have got to get back to the classical Greek. You cannot be working with a New Testament Greek text not understanding that behind that Greek text is also a Greek, a classical Greek, and behind that is a Hebrew idea with a whole understanding of everything that you are going to want to understand.

This was a significant event since with this translation available, almost every person throughout the realm had the Hebrew scriptures at their disposal. Perhaps it was just this that laid the foundation, or the groundwork, for the coming of this one who was going to come as Messiah, Savior, and King.

We were talking about Alexander the Great and the effect of Hellenism and mentioned that after the death of Alexander, there was really no one strong enough to hold the kingdom together, so it was divided among four of his generals. We are primarily concerned with Seleucis, who was in charge of the kingdom to the north, in Syria, and Ptolemy to the south, in Egypt. We mentioned that during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphius, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, was completed at Alexandria, and it set the stage perhaps in a way far beyond anything that we could imagine, for the appearance on the historical scene for Jesus of Nazareth.

To understand the real problem that the Jews faced during this historical period of time that we call Hellenistic—why is this period of Greek history called Hellenistic? What is the Greek word for Greece? Elene means Greek. Hellenistic is just an anglicized form of the Greek word for Greece. Hellenism was a way of life that was completely different from that of the Jews or any other oriental people.

The civilization of Greece was essentially a city product. It developed