View Single Post
  #4  
Old 01-11-2009, 08:05 PM
bibleprotector's Avatar
bibleprotector bibleprotector is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Australia
Posts: 587
Default

While we do not see the Autographs and therefore know by this what language Mark wrote in, it should not be used as an avenue to advance anything that would possibly undermine the Scripture, including the proper tradition of how it came to us.

It is one thing to reason in line with Scripture, it is another thing to just speculate (which is wrong if it be found to contradict Scripture).

For example, if we examine Mark and historgraphy surrounding it, we could ask (hypothesise), Is it consistent that it could have been written not in Greek, but in "Latin or a Graeco-Latin dialect"?

There are some indications that we can find from Mark which help. A number of times Mark gives a word in Hebrew and then explains its meaning. Therefore, Mark did not write in Hebrew. It is often said that these words are "Aramaic". But even according to that objectionable theory, Mark's language was not "Aramaic".

Mark is not addressed specifically to a Latin audience. Mark contains Graecisms, like "Elias", etc. Mark was apparently written with Peter's input, a Greek speaker. Also, Mark lived in a time when Greek was still dominant, and his missionary trip was into Greek areas.

It cannot be denied that Mark contains some Latin words, such as "Praetorium", but these can easily be seen to be as Latin words written in Greek.

The issue here is that if we begin to allow that Greek was not the language of the book of Mark, it could be used to further grow to the overthrowing of doctrines of Scripture, like those who now dogmatise upon the inspiration of the 1611 translators.

The article above seems to blur the lines of tradition. No blurring is required if we believe that the KJB contains the inspired Word of God. The blurring occurs as people begin to ascribe inspiration to the translators, and begin to do other things against history, such as denying that the books of Moses could have existed in Greek before the birth of Christ, or (on the other extreme) that the Hebrew of the New Testament was really "Aramaic", etc.

That is why I said that the above article contains some flawed points of reasoning, and several points which are really devoid of proof.