I was trying to make sense of Revelation 12 yesterday in my quiet time.
John has covered his second cycle of events (chapters 8 – 9) and the Interlude (chapters 10 – 11). Now comes a focused part on Satan, the two beasts, and the destruction they bring (chapters 12 – 14).
In the Pastorals, Paul talks about “healthy (ὑγιαινούσῃ) teaching.” ὑγιαίνω has a range of meaning that is impossible to bring into English and provides an interesting study in semantic range.
I have been playing around with word meanings lately. How do words get meaning? We understand that words have a semantic range, a bundle of meanings, and it is the context of the passage and not the word’s etymology that is determinative of meaning.
I came across an interesting situation this morning in Sunday School. (You remember Sunday School? That mid-level entry point into our mega churches?) The NIV translates Mark 3:21 as, “when his family heard about this… “?
