| ▲ | aetherspawn 4 days ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Michael is the archangel (Jude 9) and 1 Thess 4:16 say Jesus is also (14-16 for context), so if there is one archangel then they are the same person. Not uncommon to receive a new name after a significant event, for example Saul renamed to Paul, Jacob to Israel. Or maybe Michael is just the name used by angels and Jesus is what was picked by his human parents. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | mapontosevenths 4 days ago | parent [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
That's an interesting take, but it all sort of hinges on the exact translation you use because it leans heavily on interpreting one particular sentence, and even one word in a very particular way. In this case it seems to be the word "the" in the phrase "the archangel." That's dangerous, and I'd love to talk about why it's dangerous. Lets start here: https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Thessalonians%204%... If we check out some of the other translations, we can see that Thessalonians 4:16 has been interpreted many ways over the years, so we'll just have to pick the one that seems closest to the original. Of course, you're free to pick another, but to me the one that makes the most sense is the legacy standard bible version, as they try very hard to stay close to the original greek, and also they italicize the words that a translator had to add themselves which weren't in the original. Remember that ancient Greek sentence structures weren't the same as English sentence structures, this happens a lot. Many other versions of the Bible just gloss over it. So, in the LSB version, it reads "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a [b]shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first." To me that sounds more like the lord is bringing a list of things with him, and one of the things on that list is an archangel to use as a voice, but more importantly the phrase "the archangel" is here which does imply that there is only one, even though it is often interpreted in other versions as "an archangel". Which one is the best translation? Well there's a clue here. The word "the" is this version is one of the italicized words, meaning it was added by the translator, because it wasn't there at all in the original Greek. The other translators have just been picking whichever one "felt right" to them at the time. If you're doubting this particular translation, you're free to manually translate that bit of Greek yourself or check one of the other more literal interpretations. I think the NASB version is also very good. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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