I can't agree, brother Steven, that "strain at" is so obviously the better translation and I don't see how you derive that idea from the post of mine that you referenced.
What the passage is meant to teach us, or the moral of the story as it were, is pretty much the same in both cases (although Brother Tim seems to have his own individual way of arriving at it). That is, in either case the Lord is teaching us not to be myopically focused on small concerns when there are much more important ones that need our attention. That is true whether we are talking about excessive exertion to rid ourselves of gnats (I personally have always pictured swatting at them, which is all "straining at" them brings to my mind) or talking about anxiety not to swallow a nearly microscopic unclean beast. In both cases it holds up as a proverb about our priorities in the Christian life. So I can't rank one over the other as far as that goes.
I'm not sure I'm up to the depth of research you are suggesting, but if you happen to find a quote somewhere that would shed light on the translators' intention that would be very helpful.
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I'm not 100% sure that you are now a defender of "strain at" as the correct and proper interp, or close to that,
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I'm not sure yet what I think, but if it can be shown for sure that the KJB translators themselves actually chose "strain at" I would concede that they must have had excellent reason for the choice, because I think of them as God-fearing honorable men of the highest scholarship, and men who consulted each other before arriving at their decisions too.
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...yet that other post surely was a powerful indication that you do seem to have the gist of the matter .. strain at and strain out are not the same .. and strain at can be futile and unnecessary and overwrought efforts and thus (subject to verification) this would be a good base for understanding the physical, historical evidence of "strain at" being a deliberate and excellent King James Bible translational decision.
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As I say above, I don't see the importance you attach to this distinction. I've reread my post and I don't grasp your point.
Futile effort holds up fine as a proverb, but so does
using a strainer to get rid of a nearly microscopic unclean food while ingesting a huge unclean beast without a thought.
And the fact that three major English Bibles before the King James have "strain out", particularly the Bishop's Bible that the translators were laboring in fact to preserve to the utmost, is very convincing to me that "strain out" is a perfectly fine choice.
But it would be wonderful to find any comment by one of the translators saying that they choose "strain at" over "strain out" and giving their reasons, because all the reasons you or I can think of just remain conjecture.
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One point, when you say - "that is not what the Greek says" I am not sure that anyone has really looked closely at the contextual uses of the Greek word in Greek literature, the full range of semantic meaning. And even there, there may not be enough information to make any blanket statement authoritatively. And the one usage in the New Testament must be given proper contextual perspective, where 'strain at' makes a lot more sense than 'strain out'.
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Again, I don't see at ALL that
strain at makes more sense than
strain out. The idea of swatting at gnats hardly makes more sense than catching them in a fine mesh, and it is nowhere near as apt for paralleling
swallow a camel. It works well enough for conveying the instruction to us, both of them do, and otherwise it doesn't make MORE sense at all.
And if you are going to go down that path of questioning whether every stone was turned in the pursuit of all the nuances of the Greek, don't you have to be wary that anyone defending or rejecting many things in any Bible can say the same thing? What we don't know we don't know, but we do know that some worthy Bibles have said "strain out" and we do know that this describes what the Pharisees did.
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Generally, on such an issue, I would bypass a short note of D. A. Waite as of only minor interest, the combined internet sharing can go a lot deeper into such a matter, and you have access here to some of the most informed King James Bible defenders in the world. Matthew's knowledge of variants in editions, Brandon's page showing modern version variant omissions, Will Kinney's indepth analysis of various issues being examples.
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I dunno, Dr. Waite is a major contributor to the King James Only debate so I can't just overlook a note like that. I acknowledge the immense value of the information at this site, and Bibleprotector's and Will Kinney's (and Dr. Waite's and Dr. Cloud's too) while reserving the right to raise questions and criticisms where they present themselves.