Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Avery
Hi Folks,
Excellent question, Diligent. Allow me to continue meanwhile, we can sometimes use the confused efforts of the Bible correctors as a spur to study and understand God's word.
Any idea that translations are supposed to be chained to 'primary meanings' is only a recipe for very inferior translation. The primary meaning generally means no more than the numerically greatest usage sans specific contextual considerations.
(A textbook example of its misuse in Bible translation discussions is the preterist misemphasis on the 'primary usage' of mello. Since most events in the NT take place in short periods of time the 'primary meaning' is thus said to be 'immanent' and this is then applied to all usages despite verses where very clearly immanent cannot be the meaning. This mello bible-correction primary-meaning-error is made independently of the strength or weakness of other arguments.)
The repeated emphasis here on 'primary meaning' only shows that 'against' is fishing for an argument against the Bible and has little grasp of the subject matter. In translational discussions you will find this misemphasis, this conceptual error, discussed under titles like the Fallacy of Lexical Concordance and the "basic meaning (grundbedeutung) fallacy".
Now, 'study' in 1611 clearly had a semantic range quite similar to today, although we have sometimes (but not always) passified the word 'study' from its historic dynamism, which is however still very much a part of our vocabulary. ("I'm going to study it out" ... meaning research, check with friends, look it up, ask the Lord Jesus for wisdom.) and the meaning appears dynamically in better modern dictionaries as well.
Ironically the King James Bible itself shows you clearly that study had a sense similar to that which we have today, not just the meaning of diligence. That I will plan to cover in the next post,
I felt the conceptual fallacy error issue here comes first, and the various other mistakes flow out of the conceptual error of 'against' trying to correct God's word, falling into a basic lexical fallacy.
Shalom,
Steven
|
Unfortunately, Steven Avery, you have committed a logical fallacy by engaging in a straw man argument. Perhaps you will actually consider dealing with the content of my argument.
Today the word “study” normally conveys the idea of acquisition of knowledge. Diligence normally conveys the idea of persistent effort. The Greek word “spoudazo” means persistent effort. Four hundred years ago “study” meant persistent effort. The first phrase in 2 Ti 2:15 is intended to convey the idea of persistent effort to be approved of God not acquiring knowledge. Thus “Be diligent” is a better rendering of “spoudazo” not because the KJV translators made an error, but words change their meaning over time.
If the English rendering has led you to believe that this passage is only about acquiring knowledge or mainly about acquiring knowledge, then you have misunderstood the meaning of this passage and you are not “rightly dividing the Word of truth.”