I never seen any debas or WT versions about following places in Bible.
Rev 21:22-23 with Isa:60:19-20
who exactly is the light of the new Jeursalem?
Some comparison
by Shazard 4 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Shazard
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mdb
“The sun shall no longer be your light by day,
Nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you;
But the Lord [yhwh] will be to you an everlasting light,
And your God [elohim] your glory.
Your sun shall no longer go down,
Nor shall your moon withdraw itself;
For the Lord [yhwh] will be your everlasting light,
And the days of your mourning shall be ended.
Isaiah 60:19,20But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God [kyrios theos] Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God [theos] illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.
Rev 21:22,23Worth noting is the fact that the definite article ho is not used in Rev 21:23 "for the glory of God [theos]", which when in reference to Isaiah, is obviously speaking of the God [elohim] of Israel. This should cause a problem for the WTBTS since it is for that reason (the lack of a definite article) that the NWT translates John 1:1 as "a god". Of course, there are other passages where the definite article is present [ho theos] and directly used in reference to Jesus Christ: "And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God! [ho theos]” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20:28,29
Anyway, to answer your question, the light of the new Jerusalem is the Lamb (Jesus Christ) who is the Lord (yhwh). Also notice that God is also called Lord (kyrios) in Rev 21:22.
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peacefulpete
For what its worth to you, this imagery is fairly standard stuff. It occurs in a number of preChristian and contemporary apocalyptic works. Describing God or his saints as light producing is a throwback to solar worship.
It is also quite possible that the 'lamb' in these verses was inserted into the text when the Jewish sources were adapted or by a later editor.
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Leolaia
Worth noting is the fact that the definite article ho is not used in Rev 21:23 "for the glory of God [theos]", which when in reference to Isaiah, is obviously speaking of the God [elohim] of Israel.
Just a little correction....ho is the definite article for a nominative noun, theos is genitive in Revelation 21:23 and indeed is preceded by the genitive definite article tou, doxa tou theou "glory of God". Moreover, it isn't simply the fact that theos in John 1:1 is anarthrous (lacks a definite article), but that the noun is also preverbal and nominative in a copular predicate. Theos "God" is normally anarthrous in other grammatical constructions, such as following another noun (i.e. pneuma theou "Spirit of God", Matthew 3:16), as an oblique (i.e. theó panta dunata "in God all things are possible," Matthew 19:26), as an object of a preposition (i.e. apo theou eléluthas "from God you have come," John 3:2), and so forth. There are even cases of anarthrous theos in a preverbal position in copular predicate that are definite (i.e. theou eimi huios "I am the Son of God", Matthew 27:44), but these are not true parallels to John 1:1 because theos is not nominative. It is in the particular construction that occurs in John 1:1 that the predicate nominative noun can either be indefinite (as it is in Mark 11:32, John 4:19), definite (as it is Matthew 27:42, John 1:49), or qualitative (as it is in Mark 14:70).
Because of this ambiguity, it is the semantics of the phrase that determine the meaning, not the grammatical construction. For instance, if the two nouns in the copular construction can be swapped positions with no change in meaning, then the predicate noun is probably definite, but if the sense changes, then it is more likely qualitative. A definite noun has unique referential identity, an indefinite noun is construed as a member of a class, and a qualitative noun indicates the nature or quality of the referent. The majority of anarthrous predicate nouns in John and 1 John are qualitative (cf. John 1:14, 2:9, 3:4, 6, 6:63, 7:12, 8:31, 44, 48, 9:8, 24-25, 27-28, 31, 10:1, 8, 33, 34, 12:6, 36, 18:26, 35, etc.), and a subset of these indicate the nature of essence of the noun (cf. John 1:14, 2:9, 3:6, 4:24, 6:63, 12:50, 17:17, 1 John 1:5, 4:8), a usage that is highly distinctive of the Johannine works. John 1:1 is a very strong candidate for the latter. Meanwhile, the use of this kind of noun to indicate the indefinite is very rare since the author generally indicates this by placing the anarthrous NP after the verb (cf. John 4:14, 18, 8:55, 9:28, 10:12, 11:38, 15:8, 18:15, 38, 40, 19:12, etc.). Translating "the Word was divine" captures the qualitative sense of the noun, but may insufficiently express the full force of the qualitative relation since "divine" in English is commonly used to express a lesser sort of divinity than full deity. To see what I mean, compare 1 John 4:8, "God is love (ho theos agapé estin)". This does not mean that love is itself God, but that God has all the nature and properties of love. It does not mean that God is love in a lesser sort of way, that God has only some of the qualities of love. It means that God is everything that love is. Similarly, the Word is not merely divine in a lesser sort of way but is everything that God is. This is why Harner prefers the expressing the thought in John 1:1 as "The Word had the same nature as God" (cf. the NEB, "what God was, the Word was").
What is interesting too, as you note, is that Jesus is called theos elsewhere in other grammatical contexts (cf. the articular John 20:28), and there are many instances in early Christian literature in which the usage is exactly the same as when "God" is the referent. (I won't give these because my post is already long enough as it is)
As for Revelation 21:22-23, this is one example of many in the NT in which language originally applied to Yahweh in the OT is applied to Jesus in the NT.
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Shazard
Any JW explanation. Just interesting how JW explains away these two places where it is very clear that contexts are similar, so they can be compared and so we see that fulfillement of OT prophecy applied for YHWH is shown to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ.