Prepositional phrases are generally adverbial, but certainly not always. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell what they modify.

I have had a great summer off from my daily routines and have been busy on some major writing projects. They will be announced at this year’s ETS annual meeting. You’ll like them.

But during the summer Robin (my wife) and I were listening to some sermons from an excellent preacher. I want to emphasize that he is really good. But even really good exegetical preachers can make mistakes, and his mistake, as subtle as it was, should serve as a reminder that we should always check the Greek before we preach.

I have no doubt that this preachers knows the Greek rule I am going to share with you, but I don’t think he checked the Greek this time.

Jesus is out on the sea with his disciples, the storm comes up, and the disciples wake up Jesus to ask him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” (NIV). The preacher preached this passage as an open question, one in which the disciples showed no faith in Jesus. But is that right? This certainly is the impression that the NIV gives (as well as all the other major translations). Even the NLT is at fault here, making the disciples faith even harder to see. “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?”

The Greek is, διδάσκαλε, οὐ μέλει σοι ὅτι ἀπολλύμεθα; What do you see?

I am taking a break from my Monday with Mounce blog until September. See you September 10th.

There are lots of little things in this section that make translating fun. If you are in class, make an experiment. Have everyone do their own translation on this section and compare notes.

This question can be answered several ways, but this morning I am not interested in the issue of the faithfulness of the manuscript tradition to the original autographs. I am interested in the faithfulness of our modern Greek texts to the ancient Greek manuscripts we have.

I was proofreading a statement I made in my textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek. In 8.13 I say, "The ν in the third singular ἐστίν is a movable nu, but ἐστί occurs only once in the New Testament (Acts 18:10)."

This statement is true for NA27 (the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland text) and UBS4, but in NA28/UBS5 it isn't true because the modern editors have standardized spellings. There are other examples of this, but ἐστί illustrates my point.

Why do this? Have the manuscripts changed? Is this an issue of textual criticism? I don't think so, since there are standardizations of spellings elsewhere as well. This appears to be an overall decision of the editors of the Nestle/Aland.

This is one reason why I am thankful for the new Tyndale House Greek New Testament. The vast majority of scholars agree that the earliest texts such as Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are the most reliable, so shouldn't our modern critical text follow them more closely, not just in what words are actually used but in things like spelling? See the Introduction to the Tyndale House text for a detailed discussion of their approach, pp. 508-12).