Need for 'Semitic Mentality' to Comprehend Book of Revelation

Since the Scriptures were written for all nations and for all ages, their main essential truths reveal themselves in such distinct and unambiguous terms that men and women of good will, will always recognise them and embrace them. But when we seek for the full force and meaning of each particular passage of Scripture, within its proper context, we are grateful to those who, through careful scholarship and study of the ancient Near East, have brought us closer to the original times and circumstances of its authorship. For although, as said, the Bible has a universal application and relevance, it is very evident that it, written as it was by mainly Jewish (certainly Semitic) authors, primarily appeals and is intelligible to the middle eastern and Jewish cast of mind (cf. Romans 11:24).

Of course the human mind, in its fundamental nature and operations, does not differ from one person to the next; and that includes peoples as far removed as the East is from the West (Psalm 102:12). However there does appear to be, on average, a pronounced distinction in intellectual emphasis between the two: the eastern mind and the western. This interesting distinction is explained well by Professor Stalker (The Life of Jesus Christ, p. 65), who contrasts what we might call the more contemplative oriental cast of mind with the discursive, analytical western mind. “Our thinking and speaking when at their best”, he suggests, “are fluent, expansive, closely reasoned. The kind of discourse which we admire is one which takes up an important subject, divides it out into different branches, treats it fully under each of the heads, closely articulates part to part …”. By contrast, the oriental or Jewish mind, he says, “loves to brood long on a single point, to turn it round and round, to gather up all the truth about it into a focus, and pour it forth in a few pointed and memorable words. It is concise, epigrammatic, oracular”.
Whereas a western speaker’s discourse “is a systematic structure, or like a chain in which link is firmly knit to link”, according to Stalker, “an Oriental’s is like the sky at night, full of innumerable burning points shining forth from a dark background”. Because of this rather dramatic contrast between the application of the western and the eastern mind, the difficulty of translation, great in all cases, is especially great in translating from eastern to western languages. The methods of expression in eastern languages are much richer in metaphor and figure. And this is especially the case with the Hebrew language of the Jews, for the following reason given by M. Müller (as quoted by Mackinlay, op. cit., p. 51):

The strict monotheism of the Israelites discouraged the arts of the sculptor and artist, which flourished among the Egyptians, Babylonians and Greeks: there can be no doubt that the Hebrews possessed the artistic feeling, but the expression of it was chiefly confined to the use made of language; we find word-pictures, poetic images, metaphors and illustrations employed very freely in Scripture ….

Quite often, according to Müller, the Hebrew language makes use of a play on words “to fix attention”; enigmatical utterances occur, and at times statements are made purposely, “in a manner difficult to comprehend, as for instance in the case of the number of the beast” (Revelation 13:18).

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