Article: Acts 19:35 Diana or Artemis? Jupiter, Zeus or Heaven?
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Acts 19:35 Diana or Artemis - Jupiter, Zeus, or Heaven?
"And when the townclerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess DIANA, and of the image which fell down from JUPITER?"
There are a growing number of Christians today who no longer believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. Some reluctantly and others boldly come right out and tell us that "No Bible and No single text in any language, (be it Hebrew, Greek, English, Swahili, or whatever) IS NOW the complete, inerrant, and 100% true and accurate words of God." I believe this is one of the predicted signs of the falling away from the faith that occurs before the glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ. (See 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4)
At a particular Bible Club I belong to, a fellow Christian brought up the following accusation against those of us who believe the King James Bible is the providentially preserved, complete and inerrant word of God in the English language. He said: "There are some KJV-Onlyists who actually argue - when it is demonstrated that the KJV text departs from the traditional (or even any) Hebrew or Greek text - that, yes, the KJV does not agree with the underlying original language, but, they assert, by some miraculous, magical process the KJV variant (even though unsubstantiated by any manuscript in the original languages) is somehow flawless and the original language sources wrong."
I then asked him the following: "First of all, do you personally believe in the inerrancy of any Bible in any language? Do you believe there is such a thing as a complete, inerrant, 100% true and accurate Bible in any language on this earth today? If so, which one is it?
Secondly, could you please show us one or two examples of where the King James Bible allegedly follows NO Hebrew or NO Greek text in any of its readings? Thanks, Will Kinney"
This Christian brother then responded to my first question by saying: "I don't believe anything available NOW can be called inerrant. But I do believe that the TEACHINGS of the Bible have come down to us intact, even though there are many defects in the surrounding narratives."
This Christian does not believe there exists any Scripture that is the inerrant words of God. He has no infallible Bible in any language to use or recommend to anyone else. He then shows the complete breakdown of the logic of his thinking by telling us that the "teachings are intact", even though there are many defects. Fellow saints, isn't it obvious that the teachings of the Holy Bible are made up of individual words, and if these words are either "omitted or added, confused, contradictory, taken from another source, or incorrectly translated", that the subsequent "teaching" is also perverted and not at all the same?
Once a person abandons the position of faith in an inerrant Bible, providentially preserved by Almighty God according to His promises found in the Book itself, he then becomes his own "Final Authority". He becomes a Bible Rummager, digging around in all the variant readings and picking out those he personally favors and translating them according to his own understanding. His resultant and ever-changing "bible version" will differ in countless ways both large and small from everybody else's. This is the position modern scholarship has gotten itself into.
As for the second question where I asked him to provide a couple of examples where the King James Bible allegedly does not follow any Hebrew or any Greek text, he replied: "Oddly enough this one was already answered, indirectly, by Gail Riplinger in her book, when she fulminated about how modern versions didn't have "Lucifer" in Isaiah, and had Artemis instead of "Diana" in Acts 19 which the KJV picked up from the Latin Vulgate."
I appreciate the fact that this brother was willing to give a couple of concrete examples of what he perceives to be errors in the King James Bible. The purpose of this present article is to address the example he brought up about Diana or Artemis as found in Acts 19:35.
As for the Lucifer example, I have already addressed this in a separtate article which can be seen at my site here:
- Lucifer or Morning Star?
Diana or Artemis - Jupiter, Zeus, or Heaven?
King James Bible Acts 19:35 - "And when the townclerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess DIANA, and of the image which fell down from JUPITER?"
NIV, NASB Acts 19:35 - "The city clerk quieted the crowd and said: "Men of Ephesus, doesn't all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great ARTEMIS and of her image, which fell from HEAVEN?"
NKJV - Acts 19:35 - "And when the city clerk had quieted the crowd, he said: "Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple guardian of the great goddess DIANA, and of the image which fell down from ZEUS?"
In this little study we will be looking primarily at two different Greek words and their resultant translations. The first word artemis is variously translated as either Artemis or Diana. The second word is a compound Greek word (Diopetous), which is composed of the word Dios and the verbal form petous, meaning "fallen".
Both Diana and Artemis refer to the same pagan goddess. Smith's Bible dictionary tells us that Artemis was the Greek goddess of hunting, corresponding to the Roman goddess Diana. It then tells us that Diana was the Roman goddess of the moon, and of the fields and woods, and that she corresponds to the Greek Artemis. In other words, Artemis was the Greek name and Diana was the Roman name.
In Acts 19 the apostle Paul is preaching at the city of Ephesus, which at this time, as Smith's Bible dictionary and many other sources tell us, was "the capital of the ROMAN province of Asia." Easton's Bible Dictionary says of the word Diana - "So called by the Romans; called Artemis by the Greeks."
If you look up the Greek word for Diana in a modern Greek dictionary like Diury's Modern Greek-English Dictionary 1974, it clearly tells us that the way to say "Diana" is the Greek word artemis.
Not only does the King James Bible translate Acts 19:35 as DIANA but so also do the following Bible versions: Wycliffe 1395, Tyndale 1525, Coverdale 1535, Bishops' Bible 1568, the Geneva Bible 1599, Daniel Mace's N.T. 1729, Wesley's N.T. 1755, the Revised Version 1881, the American Standard Version 1901, Luther's German Bible 1545, and 1912, the German Schlachter 1951, Webster's translation 1833, Rotherham's Emphasized Bible 1902, Weymouth's translation 1902, the Douay Version 1950, the Bible in Basic English 1960, New Life Bible 1969, the New English Bible 1970, the Living Bible 1981, the NKJV 1982, the Italian Diodati 1649, Italian Riveduta 1927, the French Louis Segond version 1910, French Martin 1744, Ostervald 1996, Finnish bible 1776, Norwegian Det Norsk 1930, the Portuguese Ferreira de Almeida, the Romanian Corniescu, the Dutch Staten Vertaling, the Spanish Reina Valera 1909 and 1960, La Biblia de las Americas 1997, the KJV 21st Century, and the Third Millenium Bible. The first major English version to translate this Greek word as Artemis instead of Diana was the liberal RSV, and it is now followed by the NASB, NIV, NRSV, ESV and the Holman Standard. There is nothing wrong with either translation, but since Ephesus was at this time a Roman city, the King James translators and many others apparently thought it was better to give the Roman name of this particular goddess rather than the Greek name.
The Catholic versions are the usual mixed bag, with the Douay version of 1950 saying: "the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great Diana and of Jupiter’s offspring?", while the 1970 St. Joseph New American Bible reading: "Artemis and of the image that fell from the sky." Then the New Jerusalem version of 1985 goes back to: "Diana and of the statue that fell from heaven."
It should be noted that the second Greek word we are looking at in this passage is not "literally" rendered in any of the versions, and in fact, many of the modern ones have gotten it wrong.
The second word we are dealing with is the compound Greek word Diopetous. JUPITER is the name of the chief Roman god, and he corresponded to the Greek god Zeus. Again, any good modern Greek dictionary or lexicon will tell us that the way to say "Jupiter" is either zeus or the Greek word used here in Acts 19:35 - Dios.
Versions such as the NASB, RSV, NRSV, ESV, NIV and the Holman Standard have all mistranslated this as "the image fallen FROM THE SKY (or "from Heaven"). Then the RSV, ESV and NRSV all footnote that "the Greek meaning is uncertain". The Greek word used here is not the word for "sky" or "heaven" at all, but rather is the word used for the chief god of the Romans known as Jupiter, and by the Greeks as Zeus.
Those Bible versions that read: "and of the image that fell down from JUPITER" are the following: Wycliffe, Tyndale, Bishops', the Geneva Bible, Wesley, Rotherham's Emphasized Bible, the Revised Version 1881, the American Standard Version 1901, Webster's, the Bible in Basic English 1960, the Updated Bible version of 2003, the French Martin 1744, Spanish Reina Valera 1909, Sagradas Escrituras 1569, Italian Diodati, Italian Riveduta 1927, Portuguese Almeida Actualizada, the KJV 21st Century, and the Third Millenium Bible.
Those that read "that fell down from ZEUS" are the NKJV and Youngs, but they disagree as to Diana or Artemis.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the translation found in the King James Bible and many other English and foreign Bible versions as well. It is totally correct and accurate. People who do not believe in any inerrant Bible often bring up examples like this one to try to prove that the King James Bible is wrong, when it isn't wrong at all. If they only studied out the issues before them a little more, they would see that there are very good reasons why God guided the King James Bible translators in both the correct underlying texts and the proper translation of those texts.
The Authorized King James Holy Bible is the inerrant, complete, and 100% true words of the living God. Accept no substitutes.
Will Kinney
