02/06/2024
Revelation 1
8 The God who is Lord over all things says: I am the Alpha and the Omega - my I-am-ness defines time - I am present, past and future. (The union of Alpha and Omega, in Greek, makes the verb αω aō, I breathe. And in Hebrew the union of the first and last letter in their alphabet, Aleph [bull’s head] and Tav [the cross] makes ta in Ancient Hebrew or את in modern Hebrew - et, which the Rabbis interpret as the first matter out of which all things were formed, [see Genesis 1:1]. The particle et, is untranslatable in English but, says Rabbi Aben Ezra, it signifies the substance of the thing. Jesus is the 1Alpha and Omega in whom we live, and move, and have our being. He is indeed closer to us than the air we breathe. Don’t waste a day waiting for another day.
The clause, the commencement and completeness; the genesis and conclusion of everything, is wanting in almost every manuscript and version of importance. It appears to have been added first as an explanatory note, and in the process of time crept into the text [Adam Clarke].
Even though this does not distract from the context of the thought, it is an example of how commentary notes, in time, could become part of the text. We have no original manuscript - the thousands of manuscripts we do have are handwritten copies of copies for centuries and, unlike my own commentary notes where I have used italics and brackets, there were no such thing in those days which means this could easily have happened where a scribe’s notes became text. See also another example in Luke 6:1 on the 1st 2nd Sabbath. The majority of these do not alter the meaning of the text however, but some do, which makes it an important observation.)
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