The Scarlet Cord - Moriel Ministries

Shadows of The Beast). What is keynote in
the account of Iddo’s version of these 666
events, however, is that it is called a chazon
or vision. The Hebrew name of the Book of
Revelation is not the Greek Apokalypsis but
the Chazon—that is, the “Vision” of John.
Thus, in the original language text we have
a plain link of midrash and understanding
666 (“Let he who has wisdom count the
number of the beast”).
To be sure, Gematria (Greco Hebrew
alpha numerics), and a panorama of other
places where the number 666 is found in
Scripture, among other considerations, are
vital to arriving at a proper understanding
of the exact meaning of this number of a
man which the Holy Spirit will disclose to
the faithful believers at the appropriate hour
(again, these issues are addressed in detail
in Shadows of the Beast). But God’s Word
directly and overtly links midrashic interpretation
to identification of the antichrist
whether the ignorant critics of New Testament
uses of midrash approve of it or not.
The fact that such misguided figures
with their illiteracy in Greek and Hebrew,
and their confusing of the midrash found in
Scripture with later rabbinic convolutions
of it, is irrelevant. God has placed midrash
in His Word and He has done so for a reason
whether they agree with Him for doing
so or not.
Of all the books of God’s Word, an understanding
of midrashic hermeneutics in
apostolic exegesis will prove no place more
crucial than in deciphering the correct interpretation
of the Book of Revelation.
J. Jacob Prasch
(Moriel)
“Midrash and the book
of revelation”
a. midrash study
1. history of the church
a. christ’s teachings
b. apostolic teachings - paul
2. history of false teachings
a. gnostic
3. history of hellenistic teaching
4. midrash
a. jewish culture
b. how rabbi’s taught - paul
“Now the remainder of the deeds of
Abijah, and his ways and words are
written in the Midrash of the Prophet
Iddo.” 2 Chronicles 13:22
“As to his sons and many oracles
[burdens] against him, and the reconstruction
of the House of God,
behold these are written in the ‘MI-
DRASH‘ of the Book of Kings. Then
Amaziah his son became King in his
place.” 2 Chronicles 24:27
Your Letters and
Comments
AMERICAN LETTERS
Letters & Comments
QUESTION:
The Aramaic English NT by AG Roth is the
new craze amongst Messianic believers. The
translation looks spurious. I read a portion of
1 Peter from it – a bit dicey. As far as I know,
no Aramaic copies of the NT have been authenticated.
Please advise.
REPLY:
Thank you for your question.
The earliest Syriac / Aramaic New Testament
texts we have are translated from Greek.
There are no existing Aramaic originals.
If there were they were burned by the
Moslems in Lebanon when they torched
the Christian libraries in the 8 th century.
The closest text we have to the Aramaic
(Hebrew dialect of Chaldee) spoken by Jesus
would be the Peshita text which is not a
New Testament.
There is however an academic value in
the scholarly sense of comparing the oldest
Syriac manuscript copies we have from
various scriptoriums with both the Greek
NT text and the Hebrew NT text of Franz
Delitzche. This however is a scholarly pursuit
in the domain of a rather select group
of academics and requires a very high level
competence of the ancient languages and
even in this realm of expertise, the experts
themselves are not infrequently divided.
We have around 20,000 NT fragments
and codexes and nearly all are in Greek,
not Aramaic. Despite the unsubstantiated
and often hyper speculative and conjectured
claims of the Jerusalem School of
Synoptic Research (JSSR) of David Bivin,
Joe Frankovick, Roy Blizzard etc., except
for a historical reference from Heggispus in
the patristic era claiming Matthew’s gospel
was originally composed in Hebrew (which
may have meant Hebrewised Aramaic),
the overwhelming bulk of manuscript, historical,
and linguistic evidence supports
the New Testament as having been written
mainly in Koine Greek.
One book you may wish to consider in
this regard is “The Reliability of The New
Testament Manuscripts” by FF Bruce. While
I myself no longer value him much as a
theologian, some excellent work was in
the past done in this area by Craig Blohmberg.
This is a massive and complex area
of scholarship, but much of what is being
bantered about these days is often not even
scholarly. Hyper Messianic crackpots and
charlatans abound. I am not however sufficiently
familiar to comment on the work
of AG Roth. I trust this helps.
QUESTION:
First I want to tell you, we have never
enjoyed a DVD as much as the Daniel Project.
Very informative. We watch it over and
over again, as it is a great witnessing tool.
One question... we noticed Jeremy Hitchen,
appeared to be reading from notes or
note book.
We had a problem with Ezekiel 45 vr 12,
when we looked to the Bible, it mainly talks
about the shekel as weights and measurements,
nothing that we read mentioned it be
re-established as a coin. Could you explain
this to us as an end time prophecy. Thank
you so much
Pat
REPLY:
Greetings in Jesus from Singapore,
The second half of Ezekial’s book is prophetic
of the future inclusive of eschatology
and the millennial reign of Christ as well
as addressing circumstances of the author’s
own era. These aspects however are beyond
the focus of the Daniel Project.
In Hebrew, (both ancient and modern
Hebrew) the term for money and silver
are the precise same word - “ casef” and
the monetary valuation is detemined by
weight. The equivelant of cents or pence is
the subdivision by weight denominated into
“agarot” ( used in the old Israeli currency
priort the sheqal in 1980 and new sheqal
in use today) drawn from the scriptural
term ‘gerah’ found in the text of Ezekial
45:12 which has as its synonym “mina”.
The colloquial Hebrew term for pocket
change (coinage) is “garushim” from the
same root word.
In the original Hebrew text it makes perfect
sense; weight and cash value are the
same. But even in a good English translation
it is clear enough. There was a problem in
the ‘ Sitz im Leben ‘ (historical and cultural
context and setting ) of Ezekial 45 where illicit
expropriation was taking place (Ezek.
45: 9) in both metallic currency and in the
busheling of grain ( see also Amos 8:5) by
over valuating units of measurement by subtracting
from content as defined by weight.
I trust this answers your question. There
is no distinction in the original Hebrew
text between monetary value and metallic /
avoribus weight. It appears you are misunderstanding
the translation or are perhaps
reading an inaccurate translation. I am away
in Asia and your e mail was forwarded to me.
I am afraid I cannot respond further at present
. Suffice to say however that our priority
must always be on the original meaning
of the original languges (Nehemiah 8:8).
In Jesus, JJP/ Moriel
September 2012 • Moriel Quarterly 13