Sometimes the translator just has to make an interpretive decision. The Greek can mean one thing or something else, and you have to choose. Hebraic (or attributive) genitives often force this type of decision. 2 Corinthians 4:4.

Have you ever noticed that when you see something, perhaps something new or different, all of a sudden you start seeing it everywhere? You see a yellow car, and all of a sudden there are yellow cars everywhere? That’s how I’m feeling about the common belief that formal equivalent translations are better because they show the underlying Hebrew and Greek structures. My point is that in almost every (if not all) verse in the New Testament, the Greek has been altered in come way, and the only way to know when a verse reflects the underlying Greek is to know the Greek.

Paul is ending his letter to the Corinthian church and concludes with a general admonition. V 13 illustrates the issue of aspect, and v 14 shows a troubling omission in some translations.

The traditional translation is that Jesus' star arose "in the East," but the primary meaning of the word is "rising." Of course, stars appear on the eastern horizon as the earth spins. Part of the reasoning for a translation, though, is tied up[in what you think the star was. Can a start point not only to Israel but to Bethlehem, and even to where Jesus was?

Rarely does a translator let his or her theological bias show, but in 1 Corinthians 15:1-2 we can see an example. V 2 also is a strange verse to translate with some unusual constructions.

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