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01:34 AM

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Originally Posted by freesundayschoollessons

What??? You should not try to explain the Greek unless you know it. pneustos (wish I knew how to do the Greek in BBC): means "breathed-out" or "exhale" It is God's spoken word being breathed out.

So, the most literal translation of the word is found in the NIV: "All Scripture is God-breathed" or my version "All Scripture is God-exhaled"

How is that for paradoxes? The KJV is dynamic equivalent in 2Ti 3.16

In the final analysis, I have no problem with the KJV rendering "inspiration." Just making my point above that it is a colloquialism which some say does not exist.

Perhaps I miss understood you original post (if I did I am sorry). The idea we were discussing was Biblical English. And the point I was trying to make was that “God forbid” was accurate and biblical seeing that Paul was using it in the Hebraic sense. The English of the King James Authorized Bible is Biblical as I have said because it transparently exposes and expresses the Greek/Hebrew syntax, idioms, grammar, etc. Moreover, the Greek of the New Testament is more than just common Greek.

Archibald M. Hunter (Introducing the New Testament third revised edition, pp.9-11):

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Four or five centuries before Christ Plato had philosophized in Greek, Sophocles had written tragedies in Greek, Demosthenes had delivered orations in Greek. Did Paul, Luke, John and the rest of them use the same Greek?

The answer is Yes and No. The language they used was Greek, bit it was by no means the same Greek as men had spoken in the days of 'the glory that was Greece'. Their Greek is called 'Classical Greek'; the Greek of the New Testament writers is called 'Common Greek' (or, 'the Koine', which is Greek for 'the Common [language]').

This Koine, or Common Greek, was in Christ's time the international language of the day, very much as English is today...

It was in this international language, Common Greek, that the New Testament writers composed their Gospels and Epistles...

Yet it would be wrong to say that New Testament Greek is simply the Common Greek of the Roman world in the first century AD. If it were, how are we to account for the puzzlement of classical scholars when they come to read New Testament Greek? The strange and alien element which they find in it is Semitic. It is the Hebraic background of the writers glimmering through their Greek, intruding itself into their grammar, affecting the meaning of the words they use...

...take the word 'repentance'. The Greek is metanoia, and for a Greek like Plato it meant 'change of mind'. But the word on the lips of John the Baptist or of Jesus means something more drastic and existential – not simply 'grieve' but 'turn'. So when Jesus called for 'repentance', he called for a complete 'change of direction', a right-about-turn. This is because the New Testament's idea of 'repentance' reflects that of the Old Testament prophets and means a radical returning to God. (Other good examples of Greek words strained with Hebrew meaning are 'parable', 'law', 'covenant', 'righteousness' and 'glory'.)

To sum up. If New Testament Greek is Common Greek as spoken in the first century AD over most of the known world, it is Greek shot through with Semitic idioms of the Bible, as was Bunyan's prose with those of the English Bible.

As to what you noted, I originally said of (θεoπνευστος) that:

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...the word is a compound of the word God and spirit (or breath) and is speaking of the thing not only breathed by God but that which is in-spirited by Him.

You are bring into question my understanding of the Greek language, however, your “pneustos” is, to my knowledge not a word. It is one half of the word if divided after (θεo) but that is it. So, I would check your understanding of Greek.

There are two debates concerning the word (θεoπνευστος). One involves the two words in which it is derived. Obviously, (θεoς) is the first word. Yet, the second is under some debate. Thayer’s Greek lexicon states that is it from (πνεω) meaning “to breath”. Although, this is only a presumed derivative (see Strongs). Notice that the second part of the word (θεoπνευστος) is very similar to the Greek word use fro spirit (πνευμα). Therefore, I contend that the word “spirit” is a legitimate understanding. To further our understanding here look over this word family list of Greek words that are related:

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Word Family List
εκπνεω (verb)
εμπνεω (verb)
θεoπνευστος (verb)
πνευμα (noun)
πνευματικoς (adjective)
πνευματικως (adverb)
πνεω (verb)
πνοη (noun)
υποπνεω (verb)

As can be seen the root word for spirit (πνευμα) is (πνεω). To say that the idea of “spirit” is not present in this word is your opinion of which I disagree.

Too, it must further be noted that spirit in English can also at times be used for breath.

Now the word (θεoπνευστος) as you probably already know, is an adjective and more precisely because of the suffix (τος) is passive.

Listen for a moment to what John Calvin writes on 2Tim. 3:16 (Commentary On Second Tiomothy):

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In order to uphold the authority of the Scripture, he declares that it is divinely inspired; for, if it be so, it is beyond all controversy that men ought to receive it with reverence. This is a principle which distinguishes our religion from all others, that we know that God hath spoken to us, and are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak at their own suggestion, but that, being organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned from heaven to declare. Whoever then wishes to profit in the Scriptures, let him first of all, lay down this as a settled point, that the Law and the Prophets are not a doctrine delivered according to the will and pleasure of men, but dictated by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit took part in giving the Scripture.

Albert Barnes expresses on 2Tim. 3:16 (Notes on the New Testament Explanatory and Practical: Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, p. 240):

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All this is expressed in the original by one word…It properly means, God-inspired— from θεoς, God, and πνεω, to breath, to breath out. The idea of breathing upon, or breathing into the soul, is that which the word naturally conveys. Thus, God breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life (Gen. ii. 27), and thus our Saviour breathed on his disciples, and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” John xx. 22. The idea seems to have been, that the life was in the breath, and that an intelligent spirit was communicated with breath.

Here we see another connection with the word spirit.

The other debate in regards to this word deals with the application of this breathing and/or spiriting to the Scriptures. Does God breathed into the Scriptures or does He breathed out the Scriptures? I will stay the jib and spare you the bore here!

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- “One accurate measurement is worth more than a thousand expert opinions”

- “...this is the Word of God; come, search, ye critics, and find a flaw; examine it, from its Genesis to its Revelation, and find an error... This is the book untainted by any error; but is pure, unalloyed, perfect truth. Why? Because God wrote it. Ah! charge God with error if you please; tell him that his book is not what it ought to be. I have heard men, with prudish and mock-modesty, who would like to alter the Bible; and (I almost blush to say it) I have heard ministers alter God's Bible, because they were afraid of it... Pity they were not born when God lived far—far back that they might have taught God how to write.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 1: Sermon II p. 31)

- “If, therefore, any do complain that I have sometimes hit my opponents rather hard, I take leave to point out that 'to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the sun' : 'a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embracing' : a time for speaking smoothly, and a time for speaking sharply. And that when the words of Inspiration are seriously imperilled, as now they are, it is scarcely possible for one who is determined effectually to preserve the Deposit in its integrity, to hit either too straight or too hard.” Dean John William Burgon (The Revision Revised. pp. vii-viii)