I don't know who did the translations in Chilton's book, he or somebody else. The usual practice when writing a technical commentary is to state somewhere at the beginning who did the translation or what version the translation is. (Devotional commentaries don't do this, nor do they necessarily need to.)
The only information Chilton gives us about the translations in
Days of Vengeance is on pp. 44-45:
"The translation in this commentary is based largely on the recommendations of Hodges and Farstad in their "Majority Text"
Greek New Testament. The basic arguments for the Majority Text position have been presented in the works of Jakob van Bruggen, Wilbur N. Pickering, Harry A. Sturz, and others; they do not need to be rehearsed here" (44-45). So we don't know who did the translations. (Chilton does refer in a footnote on p. 328 of
Paradise Restored to
The Interlinear Greek-English New Testament, by Alfred Marshall. But I'm not impressed. Greek students are not allowed to use a crutch like an interlinear.)
Now, for the record, he is mistaken about Sturz, whose argument is not pro-Majority, but that the majority text should be equal to the Alexandrian in textual criticism. But I do appreciate that Chilton took a majority text position, though he knew little about textual criticism.
I said all of this as background for the rendering of one verse that Chilton did take credit for. In
Paradise Restored (p. 100), he wrote,
Most modern translations of Matthew 24:30 read something like this: "And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky.... " That is a mistranslation, based not on the Greek text but on the translators' own misguided assumptions about the subject of this passage (thinking it is speaking about the Second Coming). A word-for-word rendering from the Greek actually reads:
And then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. ... As you can see, two important differences come to light in the correct translation: first, the location spoken of is heaven, not just the sky; second, it is not the sign which is in heaven, but the Son of Man who is in heaven. The point is simply that this great judgment upon Israel, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, will be the sign that Jesus Christ is enthroned in heaven at the Father's right hand, ruling over the nations and bringing vengeance upon His enemies” (italics in original).
Like most amateurs, Chilton is assuming a single English gloss (one word translation) for each Greek word. It's seldom that easy. Most words have several meanings, and the proper meaning is sometimes difficult. I drill my Greek students over and over on this. I holler, "How do we know which meaning is right?" and they holler back, "Context!" (One girl this past year loved that word, and hollered it out as the answer to anything I asked.
)
In this case, the Greek word
ouranos (learned on p. 83 of Black's beginning textbook) can easily mean sky (Matt. 16:2-3, Luke 12:56) or outer space (Heb. 11:1) as well as "heaven." This is because the ancients believed in three levels of heaven (so sometimes you have the plural). So what guarantee or proof does Chilton give us that his word is right and other translations wrong? None whatsoever, once again showing his incompetence in Greek.
Another error Chilton makes here is in his assurance that it is the Son of Man who is in Heaven, not the sign. However, in the "Lord's Prayer" we have "Our Father, who art in Heaven," with the article followed by the prepositional phrase. This is how I think Matthew would have phrased 24:30 to show that it should be the Son of Man in heaven rather than the sign, but he leaves out the article in 24:30. So there is strong evidence from the very same book of Matthew against his interpretation. (This analysis doesn't even discuss how all tribes of the earth could see Christ if He were in Heaven.)
P. S. This rendering of Matt. 24:30 is apparently very important to Chilton, since he also mentions it in
Days of Vengeance (fn, 287) and
The Great Tribulation (20-21).
