Mystery of Miltha

The Mystery of Miltha

Andrew Gabriel Roth

Peshitta.org Translation Team

[email protected]

Introduction

It has often been said that the hardest aspect of any serious biblical
study
is the balancing of two very important agendas. On the one hand, the
sincere
seeker wishes to enter the mind, language and culture of the writer, to
immerse
himself in seeing things as they were when written. On the other hand,
there is
also an attempt to extract the infinite wisdom of Scripture from its
original
temporal and cultural vessel and export the gist of it straight into our
own
modern understanding. We call these two aspects exegesis and
hermeneutics,
respectively.

Both disciplines are necessary and valuable, and both are also made possible
of
course with the advent of newer and more accurate translations. Obviously
though, we here at peshitta.org have a strikingly different view about the
proper
methodology to accomplish this task, which is difficult at best and
almost never
fully completed. However, that does not mean that certain reliable
principles of
translation do not exist. This essay then is an attempt to explore
just one of
these cardinal rules that ends up being showcased so beautifully in
just the first
four words of the Gospel of Yochanan:

BRESHIT AYTOHI HWA MILTHA

"In the Beginning was the MILTHA."

Beyond the fact that MILTHA is very hard to translate (possibilities like
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"Word", "Emanation" or "Manifestation" are

common), that’s a fairly
straightforward statement. And yet, if the Peshitta
version of Yochanan is God-
breathed Scripture in its original revelatory
language, it must exist in infinite
levels of understanding.

Or, to put it another way, if there are two languages that claim to be the
original
vessel of Scripture, then by definition one must be the original and
the other a
translation. The former, because it came from God, must be perfect
and the
latter, the product of human understanding of the divine, can never be.
Such is
the case now in the field of New Testament studies where Aramaic and
Greek
face off in the arena that we call scriptural primacy. Only one can be the
first.
As for the ultimate rendering of MILTHA, all I will say on the subject is
that
the meaning starts with that of "THE WORD", but it does not end
there. It is as
infinite in its spiritual depth as the Source from which it
sprang. But we may,
through a little diligence and careful attention, get a
deeply satisfying taste of
that depth by looking at the WORDS around THE WORD.

Idioms in Translation

However, before explaining these four words in Yochanan more fully, an

example from Isaiah should prove very useful to this discussion.

In the 19th century, many missionary organizations in Great Britain and the
United States raised a tremendous amount of money to bring bible translations
to
almost every nation on the planet. Missionaries stayed in some remote areas
for
decades, learning the local culture and language in an attempt to render the
Scriptures into a form that anyone could understand. However, the quest for
clarity of ideas frequently left otherwise well meaning principles of word for
word accuracy on the cutting room floor, such as in this verse from Isaiah 1:18:

"Come let us reason together, says the LORD. Though your

sins be as
scarlet, THEY SHALL BE WHITE AS SNOW."

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Only one problem: What if you were translating into Swahili, and the people
you were trying to explain this to lived in a region of Africa where it NEVER
SNOWED? Now what do you do? Do you simply go word for word, or will you
look for
a CULTURAL EQUIVALENT that the Africans will be able to relate
their sins to
being as white as? As history shows, the latter approach was far
more preferable
and was done with great success.

Although, as illustrative as that situation was, it pales in complexity to

Yochanan, which is replete with the most intense Semitic symbolism and
spiritual
depth of any book in the New Testament. The idioms there are in fact
so deep
that they almost cannot be brought to the surface in English at all but
are more
of a flash of intuitiveness that lights upon the mind of the native
Aramaic
reader. Again the best way to show this is with MILTHA itself, which
even Paul
Younan said should simply be left intact without an English
equivalent.

Therefore, the point of all this is simply to show that idioms-especially

those of
either deep poetic or spiritual intent-cannot be rendered word for word
into a
receiving language with all the force of the original. In fact, to even
make a
reasonable attempt to approximate it requires that one of two things
happens.

The first technique is to render the idiom into neutral language in the
original
and then export that into the receiving language. For example, let’s
say I wanted
to translate the phrase, "Let’s blow this joint" into
Japanese. I can’t do that word
for word-because if I do it will sound like I
take illegal drugs! Instead, what I
will do is take that original phrase and
change it to "Let’s leave this place", and
put THAT into Japanese.

Failing that approach, I could take the second option, which is to find an
EQUIVALENT IDIOM in the receiving language that meets as much of the
original
idiom’s depth and similarity of meaning as possible. Such a technique
is
harder, but sometimes is the only way if a word for word approach creates the
wrong idea. Here’s a classic case in point: In 1979, Coca Cola came up with
the
slogan "Coke ADDS LIFE". Obviously, we understand that the INTENT
is to

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say, "Coke adds refreshment" or "Coke’s taste makes you

feel better (i.e. ‘more
lively’)." However, when it was translated into
Chinese, the ADDS LIFE
equivalent characters also could be read as, "Coke
brings your ancestors back
from the dead"! Obviously it would have been
better to give an example of
complete refreshment that the Chinese could really
understand.

Going a step further, these idioms are also most likely to happen in poetic
forms
of writing in the original language, such as Hebrew poetry in the Psalms
and
Job. No serious scholar looking at the atypical structures there would ever
dream of saying that those were written in anything other than Hebrew. The
patterns are too distinct and deep. Furthermore, no one would take some prose
from a language like Greek, and translate it into Aramaic in a way that breaks
basic Semitic grammatical convention. Even if the Greek were the best poetry
in
the world-like say the works of Homer-it will always come out as prose in
any
language that receives it. That’s not the same thing as saying though that
some poetic intent will not be apparent in the new language, since we clearly
can think that a phrase "and the mountains clapped with joy" probably
is not to
be taken literally. Rather, what I am establishing is that THE WAY
THOSE
WORDS APPEAR IN THE RECEIVING LANGUAGE WILL STILL
FOLLOW GOOD GRAMMAR IN
THAT LANGUAGE.

As a final example, let me use something even more basic. In the 1970s, a
folk
singer named Gordon Lightfoot had a hit song called "If You Could Read
My
Mind". One of the lines was from it though was very odd in that it said:

In a CASTLE DARK or a FORTRESS STRONG with chains upon my feet…

So, Gordon has switched the word order of noun and adjective ON PURPOSE.
Why?
Because it sounds better with the melody for one thing, and because he is
also
as much of a poet as he is a songwriter. Now imagine this. If Gordon was a
native Japanese speaker and translated his song into English, what do you think
the odds are of him doing the same thing with the noun-verb order again? From

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a
scholarly perspective, I believe the answer is zero.

We Want Gender Equality NOW!

So now we can finally get back to Yochanan. As most of you probably now,
there is no neuter (it, one) in Aramaic. Every word must be designated as either
MASCULINE or FEMININE. However, Aramaic goes a step further by
insisting that
the states, number AND GENDER of nouns and verbs must agree.
That is not to say
however that there are not irregular cases of masculine nouns
having normally
feminine endings, since even the Aramaic word for FATHERS
proves otherwise.
Rather, what I am saying is that, independent of whatever
irregularities may
exist by the way a word appears, that once a noun is
designated as masculine or
feminine, its accompanying verb must match that
gender.

With that in mind, let’s look at some Scripture:

…AYT HWT TAMIN ANTATHA DAYAT HWT LEH

ROKHA D’KORHHANA

(There WAS a WOMAN who was there who had a spirit of

infirmity)

Luqa 13:11

This is proper Aramaic grammar, with the female noun of WOMAN

(ANTATHA) being
joined with a female verb for "was" (HWT).

The same holds true for the masculine:

…HWA YOCHANAN B’MADBARA MAIMAD

W’MKRAZ…

(WAS Yochanan in the wilderness baptizing and preaching)

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Marqus 1:4

Again, the nouns and verbs match up, with the MALE noun (YOCHANAN)
matched up
to a MALE verb form of WAS (HWA).

However, it then gets very strange that the phrase we have been looking at
all
along then reads, once again:

BRESHIT AYTOHI HWA MILTHA

The problem is MILTHA is a FEMININE noun, and it is matched, not with

HWT as
would be proper but instead with the MASCULINE form-- HWA.
Since everyone
agrees Yochanan is a native Aramaic speaker, how in the world
does this mistake
get past him IN THE FIRST FOUR LINES OF HIS
GOSPEL?

As I hope to be able to show, the answer to that lies in spiritual poetry

--in its
original language-- whose inherent needs of truth have often been known
to
overturn normal rules of grammar.

The Beauty of ECHAD

"Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his
wife, so
that they become BESAR ECHAD (one flesh)."

Genesis 2:24

In Hebrew, there are two words to express the concept of ONENESS. The first
is YACHID which is a total singularity in all its uses. The second is ECHAD,
which also means singularity (YOM ECHAD, day one) but contains within it
the
concept of that singularity having been formed from two or more separate
things.
In the verse above, a separate man and woman become ONE FLESH.
Other examples,
like YOM ECHAD, have two things called day and night,

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become part of an umbrella

structure called "day". A great example of that
concept is also in
Exodus 12 where it is clear that the Israelites are leaving
Egypt at night, and
yet they are told that "this very day" is to commemorated.

Of course however the most famous use of ECHAD is in Deuteronomy 6:4:

"Hear O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is ECHAD."

So, while there is one God, He is a UNITY OF ASPECTS, which is why there
are
various SPIRITS that come from God, such as counsel, strength, wisdom
and
understanding (Isaiah 11:1-2). Some of these "spirits" are rendered
MALE
and others FEMALE, and yet they all REST UPON the Messiah.

Sound familiar?

But now Yochanan has a big problem.

ENA-NA=God?

In many previous discussions, I have come across the false idea that Messiah
cannot truly be divine. To refute this, I have always pointed to 1 Corinthians
12:3 which says MARYAH HAW ESHOA, or "YHWH (Lord YAH) is
Y’shua".
Once confronted with the force of the Aramaic, my opponents have
had to either
retreat back to Greek texts-not desirable since KURIOS and
THEOS were terms also
applied to Zeus, or to acknowledge the plain meaning
of the Aramaic text and
decide they disagree with it. In the latter case, that
particular line from the
apostle Paul in Aramaic is precisely the reason why the
Evyonim (Ebionites)-a
first century Jewish sect that accepts Y’shua as Messiah
but denies his
divinity-threw out all of Paul’s letters from their canon and only
accepted
the Gospel of Matthew as Scripture. They also threw out Yochanan for
reasons
that will soon be clear. However, the modern Evyonim have taken an
even more
extreme position than their ancient counterparts did. They contend
that NONE OF
THE GOSPELS CONTAIN ASSERTIONS OF MESSIAH’S
DIVINITY. However, as we are also
about to see, their spiritual ancestors knew

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better.

Other than the sacred words of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4), no other
words in
the Hebrew Tenakh are more moving to any Jew as Exodus 3:14. There, God
gives Moshe His Real Name, and He says: EHYEH ASHER EYHEH, which
can be
translated as I AM THAT I AM or, I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE. The
fact is, both
Hebrew tenses of past and future are inherent in the phrase, leading
many sages
to refer to God simply as The Eternal, or the Pre-Existent One.
Continuing then,
the next line then has God say, "You shall tell the Egyptians
that I AM has
sent you to them." As a result I AM (EHYEH) became a sacred
title, and the
actual name became revealed as YHWH, which is derived from
EHYEH (is) and HWA
(was).

Now in Aramaic, the word "I" is rendered as ENA, and 99.9% of the
time the
equivalent phrase of AM (NA) is implied. However, it is also correct to
say
ENA-NA, but most would not dare to utter that phrase. The reason for their
reticence is because ENA-NA is the Aramaic equivalent of EHYEH. Or, to put
it
another way, humans can be ENA, but to say ENA-NA is to refer solely to the
eternal aspect and existence of YHWH. But, when Y’shua speaks of himself,
guess what? He says ENA-NA. Therefore, it was not just because Y’shua
claimed
to have been before Abraham that caused his opponents to pick up
stones against
him. No, Y’shua went a step further. By saying ENA-NA,
Y’shua was saying
that he is eternal and PRE-CREATION, which brings us
straight back to Yochanan 1
("In the beginning there was the MILTHA and the
MILTHA was with God and the
MILTHA was God…THROUGH HIM
(MILTHA) ALL THINGS WERE MADE…).

Notice that language again.

THROUGH HIM (male) all things were made…

AND THE MILTHA (female) BECAME FLESH…

Again why? Perhaps the apostle Paul gives us a clue here:

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"He is the IMAGE of the INVISIBLE GOD, and the first born
of every creature. And through him were created all things in
heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether imperial
thrones, or lordships or angelic
orders or dominions; all things
were in his hand and created by him. FOR IT
PLEASED GOD
TO COMPLETE ALL THINGS IN HIM."

Colossians 1:15-17, 19

ALL THINGS, and therefore ALL ASPECTS, male and female. Remember
where we
started in Genesis, where it says that IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
BOTH MALE AND FEMALE
WERE CREATED. So that is Messiah as
MILTHA (The Word). But if Yochanan had used
MEMRA or DAVAR (male
for "word" in various dialects), the female
attributes (IMAGE) would have been
left out, as if Messiah as Miltha could only
create in one gender.

Therefore, putting it all together, what happens when the MILTHA becomes
flesh AND DWELLS AMONG US? So, in the end, here is the answer to the
mystery.
There is no neuter in Aramaic, and so there is no way for a mystic like
Yochanan
bar Zawdee to express this melding of attributes and genders in
proper Aramaic
grammar. He wants to include ALL APSECTS of the MILTHA
becoming flesh, and to
keep a male noun with a male verb is inevitably leaving
out part of the truth.
So, the only option left to him from both a poetic and
spiritual standpoint was
to show the female noun MERGED with the male verb
and, as a result, we are all
enriched by that effort two millennia later.

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