by a Bible reader; on Through a Glass, Darkly

[Mark Kohut]

A good example is the phrase through a glass darkly, which centuries of English speakers have interpreted as peering through a clouded windowpane. But when the King James translation was made, a glass was the standard word for a mirror, since the new mirrors of that time were like ours, with a silvered coating applied to the back of a sheet of glass. The original Greek text has dia spektrou, or by means of a mirror, but Greek mirrors were made of highly polished brass which have a weak and imperfect mirror-image, so the figure has an entirely different thrust. Now you see yourself as if you were looking in your brass mirror, but THEN you will have a perfect mirror-image of yourself, you will see yourself as you really are. Of course there is an error in this too, since mirrors reverse right and left, but in the mirror of Heaven you will come fact to face with your real self, see yourself truly as you really are. It is singularly difficult to translate
 this passage from the Greek, since modern mirrors do give the impression of perfect reflection, and the original meaning is lost.


      
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