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When you want to emphasize a word, you push it forward in Greek word order. But what exactly is Greek word order?

Greek has a wonderful ability to state a prohibition with different nuances. Unfortunately, these nuances are often lost in translation.

Jesus' ambiguous answer to Judas' question about not being the betrayer is very clever. Judas knows that Jesus knows, and Jesus is giving him one last chance to change his mind by answering in such a way that the other disciples would not understand.

One of the things you will likely hear on the university campus is that the Bible’s depiction of Jesus is historically inaccurate. For example, did Jesus say he was God, or did the church make it up? Skeptics use the phrase “Jesus of history” to refer to who they think Jesus “really” was. They use “Christ of faith” to refer to who the church, especially Paul, supposedly changed Jesus into. But did Paul change the essential nature of the gospel.

I received an email about what could be the weirdest misuse of the aorist tense I have ever seen. They claimed that the aorist “having followed” in Matthew 19:28 describes a once for action that was eternally binding, and therefore Judas will be in heaven judging the twelve tribes of Israel. How do people come up with these things, and what lack of humility allows someone to make a claim about Greek that no grammar or commentary would allow?

As an example of persistence in prayer, Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow pestering the unjust judge until he vindicates her. His ultimate motivation is that he feared she would wear him out, or was it that he feared she would physically attack him as the NIV suggests?

What would you do if your child came over to your house, said he no longer believed the Bible, and renounced his faith? On top of that, he sent you a spreadsheet with hundreds of places in the Bible that he claims are factually erroneous or theologically absurd.

One common challenge made by skeptics of the Bible is that memory is faulty. It “leaks” and cannot be trusted over a long period of time. This means the Bible likely has errors and embellishments that were introduced during the time gap between Jesus' life and the writing of the Gospels.

Paul often gets a bad rap for seeming to be too caustic and judgmental. It’s too bad that this opinion is not more often balanced by Paul’s other statements of love and concern for his churches. But I think a proper translation of Romans 9:3 might help a little.

Because Greek is an inflected language, words that go together don't have to be next to each other. It can make translation a little challenging, though, when you start reordering words and phrases to make sense in English.

Because Greek is an inflected language, words that go together don't have to be next to each other. It can make translation a little challenging, though, when you start reordering words and phrases to make sense in English.

In English, if we have Phrase A, Phrase B, and Phrase C, normal rules of grammar mean that Phrase C is related to Phrase B, and Phrase B is related to Phrase A. But that's not the way it is with Greek; Phrase C can go back to Phrase A. Romans 8:20 is a good example.

When we construct a parallel sentence in English, we can leave out words in the second half, assuming them from the first half. We do it so naturally in English that we may not notice what we are doing. Greek does the same, but sometimes it can be difficult for an English speaker to see what is going on. (You can also watch this blog on YouTube.)

Sometimes just a little tweaking can make a helpful difference in a translation. In Romans 5:11 we can see how the CSB handles the article to reference back to a previous verse.

We used to teach that an imperative built on the present tense stem indicated an action already underway. This is most evident in prohibitions, for example, to tell a barking dog to stop. We know this is no longer the case, but it does surface from time to time in translations and commentaries.

Prof. Bart Ehrman claims that originally John 1:18 declared Jesus to be the “unique Son” (μονογενὴς υἱός), which was later changed to “unique God” (μονογενὴς θεός) by the orthodox scribes who wanted to assert the divinity of Christ in contrast to the adoptionists (Misquoting Jesus, 61–62.)

In my upcoming book, Why I Trust the Bible, due out in August, I deal with this text critical issue (spoiler alert, John originally did write “unique God”), but here I want to make a different point. Even if John did write “Unique Son,” there are other proofs for the deity of Christ.

The answer to his question is partially based on Ephesians 4:26 and a textual variant in Matthew 5:22, and as such it helps us to understand the relevance of textual criticism.

A while back I did a vlog on the supposed “17 Missing Verses” in modern translations, and  the questions keep coming. So I thought I would create a website specifically to deal with this issue. It is www.MissingBibleVerses.com.

Sometimes prepoisitional phrases can be so succint that they are hard to understand. All translation involves interpretation.

Sorry I have been gone for a while. Between a wedding, holiday’s, travels, and finishing a book, life has been a little chaotic. But things are back to normal, at least for a week.

From time to time, I find myself wondering why translators wouldn’t simply translate the Greek and let the chips lie where they fall. I know we have to be careful not to miscommunicate, and there is often meaning in the nuances of the grammar, but other times I just wish we would translate what the Greek says and means.

We all know that Greek wants to start a sentence with a conjunction to indicate the specific relationship of that sentence with the preceding. We also know that punctuation and the use of paragraphs can often perform the same function, and so an initial καί is often left untranslated. But every once in a while I come across one that probably should be translated, and the Great Commandment might be one. 

As I am working on issues related to trusting the Bible, one of the topics is Bible translation. At times it seems the translations contradict each other. One translation says “brother” and the other says “brother and sister,” so which is correct? If one translation says “he” and the other translation says “they,” which is correct? Which one is right? And why are they different? These are real concerns, and they can lead you to not trust your Bible. Part of the answer is to understand the different types of translations. Today we will look at “Natural Language” translation theory.

The Pharisees wanted to know if Jesus believed divorce was legitimate for any and all reasons. The challenge is to translate the phrase, recognizing that it is a singular (each individual reason) and also general (any and all reasons).

One of the more common accusations I hear about modern translations is that they omit the Trinity. The facts behind the accusation is that the Greek manuscripts used by modern translations unanimously recognize that 1 John 5:7b–8a was added centuries after John wrote his epistle and so these words are relegated to the footnotes. This passage is called the Comma Johanneum. The words in italics below are the added words.

Translators have to be careful with the nuances of the words they use. Did Jesus “notice” the other eleven disciples, or was be “looking” at them when he rebuked Peter? It creates an odd picture to not look at the person you are speaking to, and ὁράω can mean to “notice.”

There are times when the biblical text is ambiguous and the translator must interpret, and the decision makes a real difference in understanding and applying the verse. Case in point is 1 Tim 5:5 and our understanding of the widow the church should care for.

One of the frustrations in translating into English is our inability to distinguish second person singular and plural. Usually, context will make it clear, but not always. Case in point: in Gethsemane, was Jesus frustrated with only Peter?

There are all sorts of things worth pointing out in this verse, but the main one is how Greek can drop a direct object when it can be inferred from the context.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Mark 1:41 and how the original text says, I believe, that Jesus was angry. This is one of the seven main passages that Bart Ehrman uses to argue that the early scribes wanted to change people’s perception of who Jesus was, so they changed “indignant” to “felt compassion.”

I agreed with Ehrman that “indignant” or “angry” is the original reading, but I totally disagreed that this changed our understanding of who Jesus was, and you only have to read two more chapters to see why.