The Jesus Secret
During my research intoThe Jerome ConspiracyI came face-to-face with an unsettling truth: There is a world of difference between Koine and Classical Greek. I came to this realization when seeking to understand why the Protestant Reformers translated the Biblical text the way they did. One of the goals of the Protestant Reformation was to abandon the Catholic Latin Vulgate and translate the Bible afresh directly from Greek. Jerome had translated the Greek phraseaionioskolasisas 'eternal punishment' in the Latin Vulgate. However the writings of Jesus' Jewish contemporary, Philo Judaeus, show that this phrase meant 'punishment for an age.' So why didn't the Protestant Reformers undo Jerome's translation? Why didn't they set the record straight when they translated the Bible afresh directly from Greek? The answer to those questions left me unable to sleep for three consecutive nights. There's an unsettling piece of religious history that no one likes to talk about. The Protestant Reformers didn't even know that the Koine version of Greek ever even existed. Therefore, they translated the biblical text using Classical Greek definitions of the words instead of Koine Greek definitions. They used meanings which were up to four hundred years out of date. Aionioswas the example I had stumbled upon. In Classical Greek, this word primarily meant 'eternal.' But by the Koine Greek period, the word had come to primarily mean 'lasting for an age,' whether the age was a few years or for all eternity.Since the Protestant Reformers didn't know Koine Greek, they dutifully maintained 'eternal punishment' in their translations without any further investigation into the matter. And they subsequently taught it as being the 'Word of God' as well. But this left me dumbfounded. After all, what other Biblical words had significantly different meanings during the Classical and Koine periods? So I made a list of the most pivotal Biblical words and contrasted their Classical and Koine Greek meanings. Sure enough, even the most crucial Biblical words meant something extremely different in Koine Greek than Classical Greek. This includes the Greek worddikaiosand the many Biblical words that derive from it. In Classical Greek this word referred to "following ordinances." Basically it meant adhering to a religious or societal rulebook. However, in the Koine Greek period this word referred to treating other people justly, equitably and fairly. And once I realized thatdikaiosbased words were used 193 times in the New Testament, I realized there was a cryptographic puzzle needing to be solved. How would all these instances read if the Koine Greek meaning were reestablished? And most importantly, what message would they all converge to express? And in this cryptanalytic pursuit I discoveredThe Jesus Secret- the lost original message of Jesus of Nazareth that seamlessly connects all the New Testament writings together (when read in Koine Greek).--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.