Monday with Mounce

Why do we do what we do? Some of us are motivated by duty; we do things because we ought to. Some of us are motivated by a sense of right and wrong; we do things because it is the right thing to do. But how many of us are motivated by love?

Have you ever been in a new church and were asked to say the Lord’s Prayer out loud? What almost always happens? You say, “Give us this day our daily bread ...” and then you pause. Does this church say “debts” or “trespasses”? What is the difference, and why?

I received an email the other day that reminded me that we all need to remind ourselves to have a little humility in doing our Greek exegesis. I'm not talking about arrogance as the opposite of humility, but humble caution. The question had to do with the translation of three participles in Mark 16:16, and why the NASB is the only translation to get it “right,” and why the other translations got it “wrong.”

Sometimes we have to change the order of words to accurately convey the meaning of a Greek sentence, and sometimes this is because of how Greek can pile up modifiers.

When the Greek is ambiguous, it is always nice to maintain that ambiguity in English. But usually you can’t and you have to make a decision. However, in this verse the ambiguity is essential to the meaning of both the verse and the passage.