Monday with Mounce

Sometimes the absence of a comma can significantly alter the meaning of a passage, and its inclusion can clarify. 1 Corinthians 13:2 provides such an example.

The challenge of translating Hebrews 2:6–8 is that the original context (Psalm 8) was talking about people in general (plural), but the author of Hebrews rightly sees that it is messianic (singular) as does the author of Psalm 110:1 (Heb 2:8). So do you keep the original context, or its messianic understanding, and do you try to find a way to represent both?

My Greek Verse of the Day is a screencast vlog that I will be doing weekly at first. I will take a well-known Bible verse, read it, translate it, and then phrase it. Finally, I will include some comments about its meaning or significance. In John 3:16 I will be talking about the meaning of οὕτως, and that it can’t mean “so much” as in the traditional translations. I will also talk about the πᾶς and the fact that it is indefinite. The promises of John 3:16 are available to each and every person (πᾶς) in the entire world (κόσμος) who does in fact believe. There is no inherent limitation in the “all” (“whosoever,” KJV); the limitation is in the modifying clause.

Adverbial participles are flexible little critters with a wide swatch of possible meanings. Usually their meaning is relatively clear, sometime very clear, but other times not so much.

In 2 Timothy 1 Paul is encouraging a discouraged Timothy. When I teach this chapter, I ask the students to discover every way Paul encourages Timothy. It’s a good exercise, and one that everyone in authority should practice. There is at least one unique encouragement in every verse.

Everyone likes to do a Greek word study. Of all the things that we learn in Greek class, this is the one that stays with us the longest. The trick, of course, is to know which words to study. I was at the Biblical Literacy Conference in Philadelphia this weekend, and Sunday morning we had a reading from Genesis 1–3. I saw one of the really important hints as to which word to study