Translations of James 5:3 From Different Versions

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

The following are translations of James 5:3 from 7 modern Greek Bible versions. Can someone please translate the marked sentence from each version into the English language?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ExE7KqHcs0uQ_UDC2lQ92rGudR1e_P6p/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1milaqTg8SgtP9HuArzjcUNqofPGa6oPe/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Q5WyeWkqo64f3XQxxyKO4clS3cbPWMv/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t2TmO_zmhDRa04yfCoO35mHc74FGTEAd/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r46ITUA1dSWJ5XqM9ieBSyIEM_vTo6tq/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qrjfz5kyCxiMVbe-PfPhCc-58eJH33GE/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B-avxuGhG_bEQbL0GXQ-ixCuCcW_PthO/view?usp=sharing

2

I know there are some native Greek speakers here that can probably do a better job of this, but I had the time,
so I gave it a go:

  1. Συσσωρεύσατε πλοῦτο (γιὰ) τὶς ἔσχατες ἡμέρες (ἡμέρες τιμωρίας σας).
    You have piled up wealth (for) the last days (days of your punishment)
  2. Θησαυρίσατε για τις έσχατες ημέρες.
    You have acquired wealth for the last days.
  3. Θησαυρίσατε για τις τελευταίες ημέρες.
    τελευταίες=έσχατες
  4. Ἐμαζεύσατε ὑλικους θησαυρούς κατὰ τὰς ἐσχάτας τῆς κρίσεως ἡμέρας, κατὰ τὰς ὁποίας πρόκειται νὰ τιμωρηθῆτε.
    You have amassed physical wealth for the last days of judgement, during which you are going to be punished.
  5. Κι ενώ πλησιάζει η κρίση, εσείς μαζεύετε θησαυρούς.
    And whilst (the day of) judgement approaches, you amass wealth (lit. you gather treasures)
  6. Συγκεντρώσατε θησαυρούς για τις στερνές σας μέρες!
    You have concentrated wealth for your last days!
  7. Ἐσυσσωρεύσατε θησαυρούς, ἀλλὰ εἰς καταδίκην σας κατὰ τὰς μεγάλας ἐκείνας ἡμέρας τῆς Κρίσεως.
    You have piled up wealth, but towards your own punishment in those great days of the Judgement.

From the official (Koine) version of the N.T., published by the Greek Orthodox Church in 1912:

ὡς πῦρ ἐθησαυρίσατε ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις.
Like fire, you have acquired wealth during the time of the last days. (In other words, you’ve made a mad scramble for wealth at a time when it will do you no good.)



They all more or less express the general idea that all the riches in the world aren’t going to help you on Judgement Day. Sentences 4 and 7 are in Katharevousa (Purist) Greek. All the rest are Demotic. I suspect that sentence 1 is from a translation made for the Seventh Day Adventists. As far as I know, there is still no Modern Greek translation authorised by the Orthodox Church, but to be honest, I haven’t checked in a while. Ironically, the church allows the use of English translations with English speaking parishioners.

3

Thank you. The first quotation is from Sotiropoulos’ version.
It seems that none of the listed modern Greek Bible translations says clearly that “the last days” were already in progress at the time when James wrote his letter. These Bible versions seem to speak of “the last days” as a future time.

In contrast, the original ancient Greek text gives the idea that “the last days” had already commenced by the time when James wrote his letter, because it states that the rich had stored up treasures “in” the last days: “ἐθησαυρίσατε ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις.”

Is there a reason why modern Greek Bible versions do not render the preposition “ἐν” as “in” and give the idea that the last days were still in the future?

4

FYI, some of those modern Greek translations understand the original punctuation differently than the Orthodox Church version: …ὡς πῦρ· ἐθησαυρίσατε…

Also, θησαυρίζειν can be applied to anything that get stored up in a storehouse. Here he’s talking about the “wealthy”, so it’s a reasonable gloss, but the word could apply just as well to any sort of stores a wealthy person is storing up (that will never be used).

5

Hi Bernd,

I’m not a biblical scholar, but preceding this part of verse 3, there are references to the future. Here’s what comes before:

Ἄγε νῦν οἱ πλούσιοι, κλαύσατε ὀλολύζοντες ἐπὶ ταῖς ταλαιπωρίαις ὑμῶν ταῖς ἐπερχομέναις. [2] ὁ πλοῦτος ὑμῶν σέσηπεν, καὶ τὰ ἱμάτια ὑμῶν σητόβρωτα γέγονεν, [3] ὁ χρυσὸς ὑμῶν καὶ ὁ ἄργυρος κατίωται, καὶ ὁ ἰὸς αὐτῶν εἰς μαρτύριον ὑμῖν ἔσται καὶ φάγεται τὰς σάρκας ὑμῶν: ὡς “πῦρ ἐθησαυρίσατε” ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις.

Perhaps this needs to be taken in the context of the times. I suspect that James and his interlocutors thought the “last days” weren’t that far off. In any event, there are others here that are much more knowledgeable than I concerning biblical questions.

P.S. I just saw Joel’s post. He knows a lot more about this than I do, but I’d have to agree with him that ὡς πῦρ would go better with what immediately precedes.

6

He knows a lot more about this than I do

Not even remotely true concerning modern Greek, and I’m afraid I am a very long way from fluency in the older stuff too.

7

In Modern Greek, θησαυρίζω means 1.)to acquire wealth or 2.)to gather together similar items for the purpose of classification and presentation (in some form)

8

Yes, I suspected that modern Greek definition of θησαυρίζω from your translations. (I only meant to talk about the original). Looking the different uses in the TLG though, I think that θησαυρός might well be closer to “treasury” than “storehouse”. So maybe I’ve been misled by the translations of the Gospels that I grew up with.

And now this is a third punctuation!

ὡς “πῦρ ἐθησαυρίσατε” ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις

9

This citation I copied and pasted from Perseus. It’s from the Westcott and Hort edition of 1885. The citation in my original answer is from the Patriarchal Edition of 1912. Amazing what a difference punctuation can make! With the quotation marks, it seems almost like a gnomic aorist. “you store fire” ?

10

Oh, I see where the quotes come from. That’s not really how W&H printed it. They capitalize everything that can be traced back to the Old Testament, and provide the source in an appendix. Turning those into quotation marks seems misleading, in my opinion.

Here, by the way, it’s LXX Proverbs 16:27: ἀνὴρ ἄφρων ὀρύσσει ἑαυτῷ κακά ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ χειλέων θησαυρίζει πῦρ

I suppose that the various modern Greek translators are reading it like this:

ὡς πῦρ ἔσται, ἃ ἐθησαυρίσατε, ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις.

11

In other passages of the Bible, the phrases “ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις” and “ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτων τῶν ἡμερῶν” are rendered as “in the last days” (2Ti 3:1; 2Pe 3:3). It is consistent to render the phrase “ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις” in the same way at James 5:3.

A lot of English translations render the words “ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις” as “in the last days” at James 5:3, giving the idea that the last days had already begun in the first century, when James lived:

English Standard Version: “Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.”

New International Version: “Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days.”

International Standard Version: “Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be used as evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasures in these last days.”

American Standard Version: “Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days.”

New American Standard Bible: “Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!”

Contemporary English Version: “Your money has rusted, and the rust will be evidence against you, as it burns your body like fire. Yet you keep on storing up wealth in these last days.”

Young’s Literal Translation: “Your gold and silver have rotted, and the rust of them for a testimony shall be to you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye made treasure in the last days!”

The Bible in Living English: “Your gold and silver have rusted and their rust will be a testimony to you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have been hoarding in the last days.”

English Revised Version: “Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days.”

New English Translation: “Your gold and silver have rusted and their rust will be a witness against you. It will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have hoarded treasure!”

Holman Christian Standard Bible: “Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasure in the last days.”

Common English Bible: “Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you. It will eat your flesh like fire. Consider the treasure you have hoarded in the last days.”

World English Bible: “Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be for a testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up your treasure in the last days.”

12

A flabbergasting thread. But an innocent’s quick question: why no article with εσχαταις ημεραις?

13

I found this at the TLG:
Johannes Damascenus in his sacra parallela(Vol. 95, page 1481, line 41)
ὁ ἰὸς αὐτῶν εἰς μαρτύριον ὑμῖν ἔσται, καὶ φάγεται (40)
τὰς σάρκας ὑμῶν ὁ ἰός. Ὡς πῦρ ἐθησαυρίσατε ἐν
ἐσχάτῃ ἡμέρᾳ.»
This, I believe is his rephrasing of the verse. It appears that he was basing his understanding on a reading which resulted in the punctuation later adopted by the Orthodox church, whose version is based on manuscripts dating from 10th to 16th centuries. As indicated above, it reads:
ὡς πῦρ ἐθησαυρίσατε ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις.

In the Nestle-Aland editon (NA28), it is punctuated as:
ὡς πῦρ. ἐθησαυρίσατε ἐν ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις.

I suspect this (NA28) is what most of the modern Greek translations mentioned above are based on.

14

Early Christian usage seems to go back and forth on the article. (Justin Martyr, Shepard of Hermes, Clement use both.) In the New Testament, 2Ti 3:1 uses ἔσχαται ἡμέραι without an article in the iconic “the last days” passage. That’s not even getting into “ἡ ἐσχάτη ἡμέρα.”

15

I note that Luke added the article in Acts, while 2Tim. and Hebrews don’t. I’m assuming that the Hebrew phrase ultimately underlies the Greek, but that doesn’t really answer the question.

16

You are correct that we can’t get back to the Hebrew here – the phrase “last days” does not even appear in the OT (Neh. 8:18 has הַיּוֹם הָאַחֲרוֹן, “the last day,” articular, but it’s certainly not used in an eschatological sense). However, I think that it’s really a distinction here without a difference. Not uncommon in prose Greek (at least in the NT) to omit the article in prepositional phrases, and probably has more to do with the writer’s sense of the Greek than any difference in meaning.

17

What is the phrase that the LXX is always translating as επ εσχατων των ημερων (as at Gen 49:1), and is sometimes quoted in the NT?

18

In Gen 49:1 we have בְּאַחֲרִית הַיָּמִים, lit. “in future days” or “in days to come.” The LXX doesn’t really capture the sense, and it certainly does not bear the eschatological sense of the phrase in the NT.

19

Well, the Hebrew may not have that eschatological significance, and the LXX may be a poor translation, but the author of 2Pe 3:3 seems to have taken it that way anyway (perhaps because of the Christian eschatological interpretation of verses like Isaiah 2:2?). The version at Hebrews 1:2 “ἐπ’ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμερῶν” seems to be used with an understanding closer to the Old Testament Hebrew sense?

But given the 2 Peter author, it seems reasonable to suppose that this phrase, whether in Hebrew or a Greek translation, underlies some of the early Christian eschatological (haha) usage, despite the different original sense.

20

The omission of the article before “ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις” does not seem to have any significance. Articles are often omitted without really changing meanings.