Monday with Mounce

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.

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.)