This passage in 2 Peter is one of the most commonly cited in discussions of Biblical inspiration, along with 2 Timothy 3:16, Hebrews 4:12 and Psalm 12:6. One of the interesting things that I notice about them all is that they are often used as though they obviously say something that, on closer examination, they…
So why do I want to talk about an insignificant variant? The answer is simple. In many cases the reliability of Biblical texts is stated simply in terms of the number of variants that exist in the manuscripts. This number is quite high, but most of these variants are not significant. They may involve identical…
One basis I use for comparing Bible translations is the way in which idioms are handled. It’s difficult to measure this precisely, because you have to consider several things: Is the idiom as used comprehensible to modern readers? Does it mean the same thing to modern as to ancient readers? Is there a reasonable English…
Note: I will be using the English verse numbering throughout. Hebrew verse numbers are one greater in this chapter, thus this is Psalm 40:7 in Hebrew. In reading Psalm 40 several times, since it’s the lectionary passage for this week, I noticed a few things that I would have missed in just one pass. One…
This is a brief note expanding my query about ambiguous passages. I have discussed passage that are ambiguous in Greek, but where translating them ambiguously in English results in a different range of options from those a Greek reader would likely perceive. This passage seems to me to be a case in which one must…
I have blogged previously just a little bit about the A Reader’s Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament, and also made some negative comments about the use of interlinears, especially for Greek or Hebrew students. I recommend this lexicon for use in reading rapidly in order to encounter a large body of text in Biblical…
This relates to my previous post on translating ambiguous passages. The last clause of this verse reads, formally translated, “so that we might become [the] righteousness of God in him.” I’m interested in the range of meanings that might be heard by a modern English reader for the final phrase, “in him.” A number of…
After my comments earlier about Piper and the ESV, I found this comment by Raymond Brown in An Introduction to the New Testament: For the purpose of careful reading or study, which concerns us here, one must recognize that sometimes the biblical authors did not write clearly, so that the original texts contain certain phrases…
A friend drew my attention to this article on the ESV today, and I’m deeply disappointed in what I found there. I’m going to comment on some key difficulties with that article. But the author also links to this article by John Piper, which doesn’t so much surprise me, as put in context some other…
