WORD STUDY – MANSIONS – (ARAMAIC) אנוא

John 14:2: “In my father’s house are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told you.”

I once had a friend named George who was a former Greek teacher. In fact he was not only fluent in the Biblical Koine Greek but modern Greek as well. He was 85 years old and has since gone to his “mansion” in heaven. We would spend hours discussing the Bible in the Greek and Hebrew. He was Greek Orthodox and told how in seminary everyone was required to speak only in Greek. In classes, in the halls, anytime they were on campus they had to speak Greek. This old boy really knew his Greek. One day we got to talking about John 14:2 where Jesus said that in his Father’s house were many mansions.

We automatically assumed that when Jesus said “In my Father’s house.” he was referring to heaven. Actually, we discovered He only used that phrase one other time and that was in reference to the temple. George pointed out that the word for house in the Greek, oikia which refers to just an average size house. We looked at the word mansion and I told George that most modern English words do not use the word mansion but rooms or dwelling places. It is really the older translations that doggedly stick to the word mansions, particularly the KJV and the Douay (Catholic) version. So we looked up the word for mansion and found it was the word monai which sounds a little like mansion. Only George explained that its first century use was for a dwelling place, room or place of habitation. I said that is exactly the meaning in Aramaic for mansion which is the word anoa’. It could be just a small house or a tent or even used abstractly as a place of habitation in one’s heart.

I asked George if the word oikia which is rendered as a house could mean God’s heart. George said the word oikia itself would not mean a heart unless it is spoken allegorically. This is where I jumped in and explained that rabbis often spoke allegorically to express double meanings. In a way Jesus was referencing Heaven like His Father’s house that he would take his bride to. In that day when a man and woman were betrothed, they were legally married but they could not consummate that marriage for at least one year. The bride still lived in her father’s house while the bridegroom built an addition to his father’s house where he would take his bride at the end of the one year betrothal and consummate the marriage.

George looked at me doubtfully and said: “But both our Bibles (KJV and Douay) say mansions. So it must be mansion. I don’t know why but the church must have had their reasons for saying mansions and I will go with the church taught, they know better than we do.”

George added one very important point. The word monai for mansion is in a singular form. That is strange as it is preceded by the word many. It does not make sense to say many place. George felt that if we are looking at this allegorically as a picture of God’s heart, then there are many places in His heart, but each place contains only one person. This would account for the singular use of monai. Then he pondered and said: “That means that we each get our own individual mansion.” But, George, I said; “You yourself just admitted that the word monai could not mean a mansion, just a dwelling place or place of habitation, why do you insist on saying will have a mansion in heaven. For what earthly reason…” “Heavenly reason,” George interrupted. “Heavenly reason,” I continue, “Would we need a mansion anyways in heaven? Do we need a bedroom, we don’t sleep in heaven. Do we need a kitchen? As afar I understand spirits don’t eat. All our foods on earth comes from something living that has died and of course there is no death in heaven. Do we need a basement, attic, closets or storage rooms? What would we store? How about a bathroom? We wash off dead skin and kill off germs in our bathroom but there will be no germs or dead skin. There will be no need for that other thing we do in the bathroom either. So explain why we would need a mansion?”

George pondered this and finally said: “The church had some reason to translate this as mansion so we must be missing something or misunderstanding something. If the church says there are mansions in heaven then there are mansions. What reason would the church have to say otherwise?” “Reason,” I exclaimed, “How about trying to motivate people to attend church every Sunday and pay their tithes? The more they give and the more faithful they are the bigger the mansion. That would be pretty heady stuff for people who lived in poverty, lived in unheated, unair conditioned homes. Yeah, they wanted to go to heaven rather than hell but many felt they had that pretty well sewed up and were looking for some extra credit like a bigger mansion than their neighbor.”

George still looked doubtful as he pondered this and then he said: “No, the church would not deceive people like that.” That is when I came to the realization that the roosters had come home to chick, or something like that. He was saying it was the church, not the translators. The translators would have translated monai as rooms or dwelling places, but the church insisted it be translated as mansions.

I was listening to the radio today and there was a commercial directed at recruiting people to go into teaching. The big come on is that teaching has dramatically changed over the past fifty years with technology and methods of teaching. I thought of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. It is still being taught in our Bible Colleges and seminaries the same way it was taught for over a hundred years. Memorizing vocabulary, memorizing verbal forms, memorizing and memorizing. Yet, with the advances in modern technology and the internet anyone can learn to study the Word of God in the Greek and Hebrew just as well as George or even better. By better I mean to stop listening to tradition and listen to the Holy Spirit.

So where is the Rosetta Stone version of Biblical Hebrew. I developed that over the last 40 years (not a Rosetta Stone version but something to that effect) and I can teach anyone in just a matter of hours how to study the Word of God in the Hebrew. With the help of some people who believe this like we do at Chaim Bentorah Ministries, next year we are going on the road to bring our classes to churches, Bible Schools and organizations with our mission to get as many people as possible studying the Word of God in the Hebrew. Our website is now being redesigned by our publisher to offer online classes and seminars.

We are living in the last days and there has never been a greater need, nor a greater opportunity to study the Word of God in the original Hebrew and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth and not some power structure dictating what the truth is.

I am 67 years old, the official age of retirement but instead of retirement I am determined to reach as many people as possible with the latest innovations in education as it applies to the Biblical Hebrew.

Our website is now being updated so we will be able to offer seminars and classes online starting next year. We will also start travelung to speak, give seminars and classes in person. Please contact us if interested in hosting a speaking engagement.