The Greek word hosanna appears six times in the NT: three times in Matthew, twice in Mark, and twice in John. The context is each case includes the quotation, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” from Psalm 118:26. Because Psalm 118:25 contains the Hebrew words hoshi’a na, the Greek…
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Cameron asks via the About page whether “until everything is accomplished” (eos an panta genetai) in Matthew 5:18 could be punctuated as part of Matthew 5:19, the original being unversified and unpunctuated. That is, could the text read: I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least…
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In a comment on A. Admin’s post about Bill Mounce, Mark Baker-Wright takes Dr. Mounce to task for writing (originally here): Have you noticed the new advertisement for the Prius: “Harmony Between Man, Nature And Machine.” I’ll bet Toyota would be glad to sell to women. Dr. Mounce is using the point to support his…
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The first chapter of Jonah contains the verb yarah four times, so we see another example of the tension between local and global translation, or between text and context. What works well verse by verse doesn’t always work to convey a longer passage. In verse 5, the sailors on Jonah’s boat “yarahed” in response to…
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Thanks to A.Admin on Aberration blog for pointing out the recently posted FAQ about the revisions to the (T)NIV. Gender Of the 31 questions in the FAQ, 7 are specifically about gender, and another few are about “flashpoints” (their word and their scare quotes) — presumably gender and the word sarx — in the translation.…
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Last week I suggested that imagery can be subjective, varying from culture to culture. Here’s another example. In antiquity, for a person to be “fat” was a good thing, the word essentially representing the opposite of “scrawny.” Every day, modern America produces something like twice the calories that its population needs to thrive, so many…
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On Thursday, I posted about the English translations of near-parellel passages in Mark and Matthew. It got me thinking about Chronicles, which frequently quotes other books such as Kings. II Chronicles 6:1-5, for example, seems to be an update (grammatically and in terms of spelling) of I Kings 8:12-16. In particular, I Kings 8:15 and…
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John Hobbins has an interesting analysis of near-parallel passages in Mark 1:16-18 and Matthew 4:18-20. I’m struck by the fact that I can’t find a translation that makes it possible to follow along in English. (I have a table below.) The KJV, for reasons I can’t fathom, adds the word “Jesus” to Matthew, and it…
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I’ll admit. I had an agenda when I composed my last post. And the agenda is this: The Greek pateres is one of the words that has more than one correct translation into English. Among the reasonable possibilities are “fathers,” “parents,” and “ancestors.” For example, in Ephesians 6:4 (and Colossians 3:21) it is clearly male…
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