Monday with Mounce

One of the most basic rules in hermeneutics is context. As a friend of mine says, “Context is King.” But how much context? Does the issue of context extend beyond a single verse? Perhaps to the paragraph or even the paragraph before? This is the question you have to ask in translating 1 Timothy 3:11.

Someone wrote me the other day and asked why γυναῖκας is accusative, why do some translations add “the” or “their” (wives),” and why there is no verb in the sentence. If you look at the different translations, especially all the footnotes, when you see this much variety you can be assured that the Greek is not clear.

There are times I feel myself being drawn back to more of a word–for–word translation. I think that the form in which meaning is conveyed can often be part of that meaning. I see this again in Hebrews 12:1–2 were a participle is usually translated with an imperatival sense, and doing so, I think, distracts from the actual meaning of the passage.

There is a distinction between two uses of the genitive case that is especially important. When Mark introduces his gospel by writing “gospel of Jesus Christ” (εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ), does he mean that Jesus proclaims the gospel or that Jesus is the content of the gospel?

In speaking of Judas’ burial, Matthew writes, “Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: ‘They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price set on him by the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me’” (Matt 27:9–10). The problem, it is claimed, is that the citation is from Zechariah and not Jeremiah.

Gone are the days of thinking the aorist must refer to a past event. Even though it is a default tense, it still has a wider range of meaning than most first-year students of Greek may suspect. I have often pointed out that English tends to see verbs in a row sequentially — verb A happened, then verse B, then verse C — Greek doesn’t and it uses a different mechanism.