by a Bible reader; on Through a Glass, Darkly

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

All the same as scrying mirrors, like the ones John Dee used, 
during the time of Shakespeare abd King James.
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> 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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