The Greek text of this verse is as follows:



Revelation        of Jesus     Christ       which he gave to him -   God     to show  to the




slaves      of him  the things which have   to happen with speed and   he signified it




having sent it   through   the    angel        of him   to the servant of him   John,

The NIV translates as follows:

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending
his angel to his servant John.

In this and the following verses, to make it sound more natural in Toba, we have made explicit the fact that John was writing about himself. Otherwise, it would sound as though John the author was writing about a different John.

So, instead of “He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John”, we have: “He made it known by sending his angel to me, John, his servant”.

In fact, the translation in Toba is a little bit more complex than that, and José’s translation of the whole verse says:

Jenjo' jo'ne qoyen di'yoq, da'me jo'ne maliaĝa ja qoyayate'n jo'ne Dios yane'm joñe'me Jesucristo, qaedi yayatenaĝanaĝaneque jogaa'me mach'e lalemaĝaje'te ga’me jo’ne paja'a 'uo qomle. Chane'eja jayem yamaĝa ñe'me lamaĝajec jo’ne piyem le'ec, da’me jayem Juan jo’ne mach’e jayem lalemaĝajet, qaedi jayem yayatenaĝanaĝan.


Which means:

This is what is being revealed, that which is still not known which God gives to Jesus Christ, so that he makes known to his servants what is soon going to happen. Therefore to me he sends his messenger who is an angel, to me John, I who am his servant, so that he makes it known to me.

Who’s he writing about? One characteristic of the Toba language is that you would not normally write or speak about yourself using verbs in the third person.

Let’s see what this means in practice: in Revelation 1:1, John introduces himself in the context of having received a message from God...