Five Clues That Righteousness Doesn't Mean Righteousness.
(Just a little note to myself. Something I'm working on.)
Here's five clues that the word "righteousness" and it's cognates, righteous, justified, justification are being mistranslated in the New Testament.
1. The Jewish people were not keeping the law to attain righteousness in any Christian sense of that word. So when Paul talks about being justified by faith he can't mean what we mean by righteousness. If you want to know what righteousness meant to the Apostle Paul find out why the Jews were keeping the law.
2. The Hebrew word Jesus and his disciples, including Paul, would have used, that we're translating as righteousness, meant, and still means, charity, and when used in reference to God, it meant deliverance, salvation, redemption, blessing, things like that.
3. Righteousness isn't an important theological issue in the Eastern Christian churches. Righteousness is the central issue in Western Christian theology but unimportant in Eastern Christian theology? That should be a clue that something might be amiss.
4. When looked at in context the New Testament scriptures which use righteousness often make more sense when translated with the traditional Jewish translation of righteousness as charity or Godly deliverance. Matthew 6:1, 2 Cor. 9:9-10, Acts 10:2, 35, Galatians 3:8, 1 John 3:10, Romans 1:17.
5. Parallelisms in the New Testament where the words parallel to righteousness and justification often match the Jewish understanding of righteousness.