Quote:
Originally Posted by glyn
As regards to the rubbish translations, try this one. A character crops up who the bible calls 'Joseph of Arimathea', familiar to everyone who had to endure watching schoolchildrens plays just before Christmas. Archeologists from the four corners dug up 'the Holy land' trying to find a town or city called Arimathea. They could have saved their energy if they had access to the Dead Sea Scrolls. These are the oldest records of parts of the bible. What does it say? (in Greek) "Yussuf, rama Theo" - which means simply, 'Joseph, beloved of God'. Nothing to do with Arimathea. No such place. Never was. Purely the work of a spectacularly incompetant monk in a scriptorium. There are so many other examples.
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Glyn, we've been over this one before. No, no, no, and again, absolutely
no.
1) The Dead Sea Scrolls do NOT mention Joseph of Arimathea. He is mentioned in the New Testament. The DSS contain various writings, including parts of the Old Testament,
not of the New Testament.
2)The vast majority of the DSS were written in Semitic tongues, mostly Hebrew. Not Greek, except for a few texts.
3) "Yussuf, rama Theo" is not Greek. It's not Hebrew. You might call it "Greebrew" or "Greemaic" perhaps. Yussuf is a Hebrew name. Rama? Well, it ain't Greek. IIRC, it's similar to an Aramaic word for love, or something. Theo is the root of the Greek for God. So the the phrase is half Semitic, half Greek. I highly doubt it is found in the DSS, or any ancient text.
A spectacularly incompetent monk, indeed: Mistranslating a non-existent phrase in a non-existent language in a non-existent text is quite a feat.
I have been unable to find any mention of this theory online except for some random Myspace page. I'm curious as to who thought it up- it's very ingenious, although completely nonsensical to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Bible and Biblical languages.