Bill Mounce

For an Informed Love of God

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Thursday, January 23, 2020

Did Cornelius call the angel “God”?

κύριος has a range of meaning from “Lord” (meaning “God”) to “Sir.” Which translation would you choose for Acts 10:4?

Comments

¶ "Lord" is just a stumbling block in modern American English religious usage, because it has become Christianese Just go across the sea to Great Britain and you will find a "House of Lords." No one thinks of that as the "House of Gods." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord : "Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting like a master, a chief, or a ruler," or any English dictionary, for that matter. Then check the LSJ, a secular ancient Greek dictionary: http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/#eid=62972 , which hardly has any religious references in the definition at all. So, there is nothing wrong with calling the angel "Lord," just a problem with lack of literacy and education in modern America. ¶ Hmm, I'm sure that all Americans will remember that Darth Vader was called "Lord Vader," yet nobody in either the fictional or real audience thought of him as God, either.

After listing to the clip on kurios, I was wondering why the Mounce-NT has also translated the word as Lord and not as Sir as detailed within the NTL (This is not a criticism rather a query).

It is own my list to change — Bill

Bill I would like to thank you for these blogs for they are very helpful to me as a leader in our church but also as I am learning Greek through the use of your literature and your lectures that are on Bilicaltraining.org . Now to the subject of this blog, I believe you are correct in your choice of (Sir) for Acts 10:4 but as I was listening to you on the matter my mind went back to Acts 9:5 and I started studying it a little to see if it would be appropriate to translate kurios in this verse as (Sir) also, but I found it a little tricky . I would like to know your thoughts on this verse? Would (Sir) be a appropriate translation for it? Thank you.