.........................................................................
Quotation marks re not found in any early NT manuscripts before 1600 A.D. They are put into translation
wherever the translator wants them.
The use of "Alpha and Omega" at Rev. 1:11 is spurious.
Excerpt from my study "
Speaker Confusion Trick":
Is Jesus ‘Alpha and Omega’ in Rev. 22?
Now look again at Rev. 22:8-16. (The SC trick doesn’t work nearly as well here, but some trinitarians insist on using it anyway.) John is identified as the speaker in 22:8. The angel speaks in
9). The angel apparently continues speaking in
10). The angel may be still speaking in
11) --- or it could be John or even someone else (as implied in verse 10 in the
NAB,1970 ed.).
Now is the
angel still speaking in
12) or is it
God, or is it
Jesus, or even
John? There is simply no way of telling who the speaker is from any of the early Bible manuscripts. It’s entirely a matter of translator’s choice. Some translators have decided it is the angel who continues to speak, and they punctuate it accordingly. So the
JB, and
NJB use quotation marks to show that these are all words spoken by the
angel.
However, the
RSV, NRSV, NASB, NEB, REB, NKJV, NAB (1991 ed.),
ESV,
ISV,
NLT,
21st Century King James Version,
Third Millenium Bible, and
TEV show by their use of quotation marks that someone else is now speaking in verse 12. Most Bibles indicate that the person who spoke verse 12 (whether God, angel, Jesus, or John) also spoke verse 13 (“I am Alpha and Omega”).
Now the big question is: Is it clear that the speaker(s) of verses 12 and 13
continues to speak? Some Bibles indicate this. But other respected trinitarian translations do not!
The
RSV, NRSV, NASB, NEB, REB, NKJV, NAB (1991 ed.),
ESV,
ISV,
NLT,
21st Century King James Version,
Third Millennium Bible, and
TEV show (by quotation marks and indenting) that Rev. 22:14 and 15 are not the words of the speaker of verses 12 and 13 but are
John’s words.
(
The Jerusalem Bible and the
NJB show us that the
angel spoke all the words from verse 10 through verse 15.) Then they show Jesus as a
new speaker beginning to speak in verse 16.
So, if you insist that the person speaking just before verse 16 is the same person who is speaking
in verse 16, then, according to the trinitarian
RSV, NRSV, NASB, NEB, REB, NKJV, NAB (1991 ed.),
ESV,
ISV,
NLT,
21st Century King James Version,
Third Millennium Bible, and
TEV, you are saying
John is
Jesus!!! (According to the
JB and
NJB you would be insisting that the
angel is
Jesus!)
And, just as the use of “I, John” indicated a
new speaker in Revelation, so does the only other such usage in that same book. Yes, Rev. 22:16 - “
I, Jesus” also introduces a
new speaker. This means, of course, that the previous statement (“I am the Alpha and Omega”) was made by someone else!
Even the
KJV translators have shown by their use of the word “his” in verse 14 that they didn’t mean that Jesus was the same speaker as the Alpha and Omega. The speaker of verse 13 is Almighty God. The comment in verse 14 of these Bibles (as literally translated from the Received Text) explains the importance of doing “
His Commandments” (not “
My Commandments”)! Therefore the speaker of verse 14 is obviously
not God as clearly stated by those Bibles which were translated from the Received Text, e.g.,
KJV; NKJV; KJIIV; MKJV; Young’s Literal Translation; Webster Bible (by Noah Webster); and
Revised Webster Bible. Lamsa’s translation (
Holy Bible From the Ancient Eastern Text) also uses “him.“
So we can easily see that there is no reason to say
Jesus spoke the words recorded at Rev. 22:13 (or the above-named
trinitarian Bibles would surely have so translated it!) and, in fact, the context really identifies the speaker as being the same person who spoke at Rev. 1:8, God Almighty, Jehovah, the
Father.
The only other use of the title “Alpha and Omega” confirms this understanding.
“And
He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ .... And He said to me, ‘It is done. I am the
Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. .... He who overcomes shall inherit these things, and I will be his God and
he will be My son.’” - Rev. 21:5-7,
NASB.
“Revelation 21:6, 7 indicates that Christians who are spiritual conquerors are to be ‘sons’ of the one known as the Alpha and the Omega. That is never said of the relationship of spirit-anointed Christians to Jesus Christ. Jesus spoke of them as his ‘brothers.’ (Heb. 2:11; Matt. 12:50; 25:40) But those ‘
brothers’ of Jesus are referred to as ‘
sons of God [the Father].’ (Gal. 3:26; 4:6).” - pp. 412-413,
Reasoning from the Scriptures, WBTS, 1985.
So Rev. 21:6, 7 confirms the understanding that the Alpha and Omega is the Father, not Jesus.
In short, there is no reason, other than a desire to support the trinity tradition, to believe that Jesus is being called “Alpha and Omega” in Rev. 22. And there is good evidence to believe that it is his Father only who uses this title for himself.
