Article October 29, 1938 Issue

Bible Notes

"As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive" (I Cor. 15:22)—According to the context in which it is employed, the Greek preposition "en," here translated "in," can be rendered in various ways, including "by, through, with" (Thayer: Greek Lexicon, pp. 209—213). Thus Murdock, in his rendering of the Syriac Version, has: "For as it was by Adam that all men die, so by the Messiah they all live."

"In the beginning" (Gen. 1:1)—Those early Aramaic paraphrases of the Old Testament, which are commonly known as Targums, provide some interesting suggestions concerning the significance and the translation of the Hebrew phrase usually rendered "in the beginning." For instance, the Targum of Jerusalem renders "in wisdom," and that of Palestine, "at the beginning"; while the Targum of Onkelos sets down a word which may be rendered "in eternity" (see Etheridge: Targums of the Pentateuch, Vol. 1, p. 36).

"The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden" (Gen. 2:8)—The geographical situation of the "garden of Eden" is suggested by the references to the rivers Euphrates and Tigris (the latter being the Biblical "Hiddekel"—verse 14), and the assumption that the garden formed part of the Babylonian plain is upheld by the fact that cuneiform inscriptions, recently discovered in that region, speak of this territory under the closely similar name of "Edin."

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