From the About page comes a question about baptism, the essence of which is the observation that the words we now translate “baptize,” “baptism,” “[John the] Baptist,” etc. were actually ordinary words in Greek, like our “wash” in English. They were not technical religious terms like the English “baptize,” and the Greek words did not…
Read more
The Dictionary The dictionary can be double edged sword, used either to understand or wielded to confuse. In another forum, a KJVO proponent defended the KJV translation “the voice of the turtle” (for the Hebrew kol ha-tor) as accurately representing a bird call in Song of Songs. His reasoning was that “turtledove” is listed as…
Read more
James 2:23-24 uses the same root twice to highlight the point that Faith requires Works. But that important rhetorical device — duplication of the root — is lost in most translations. For example (NRSV): (23) …”Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” [Genesis 15:6] … (24) You see that a person…
Read more
Bill Mounce notes (also here) that Classical Greek had two words for “new”: neos and kainos. We see them both in Matthew 9:17 (as well as Mark 2:22 and Luke 5:37), where Jesus relates that people “pour new wine into new wineskins” (NIV). The problem is that this translation (along with the NLT, CEV, and…
Read more
[Between six appearances in four cities and then having to buy a new car, I haven’t been in front of a computer in nearly two weeks. So I’m playing catch-up, starting with a much-delayed installment of “translation traps.”] Following up on some thoughts about myopic translations, here’s one way in particular that a translation can…
Read more
From the About page comes this response to something I wrote in And God Said: On p. 155 of And God Said you claim that “there is no divorce in the Bible.” Yes. Two great questions follow. I’ll take them in reverse order: The Case of Two Husbands Also, you speculate that perhaps the Bible…
Read more
Recent posts from my Ancient Wisdom, Modern Lives:
