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Mike, have you ever thought that the real problem is that you think you know it ALL and that everyone around you is always wrong?
You got the the order right in the interlinear. "Amid fear and trembling" but then you go off the rails with your flawed English translation> "Work out your own salvation".
The order of the words are "eautwn" (your own) "swthrian" (salvation) "katergazesqe" Tense: Present Passive Imperfect (is being worked out--for you BY God, we would assume). The fact that the verb is passive indicates that it is NOT the person who is working out his salvation, which would be ACTIVE, but that someone is working out the salvation for them, which would be PASSIVE, just as the tense indicates.
The Greek Parsing for katergazesqe (work Out) from Strong's is: V-PMM/P-2P
Part of Speech: Verb
Tense: Present
Mood: Imperative Voice: Middle or Passive
Person: 2nd Person
Number: Plural
Unlike English, Greek has both active and passive, but also middle. The middle voice is described as "self." An example in English would be, "I comb myself," self roughly meaning "to selfcomb."
The 2nd Person form of a verb is as follows;
Note the word you in both the 2nd Person singular and plural.
From Strong's Verb Parsing above, the tense and mood is present imperative. The Present Imperative is often a call or command to a long-term commitment and calls for the attitude or action to be one's continual way of life (lifestyle). It has nothing to do with an outside agent acting upon you.
Lastly, and I hope this will put this to rest, I said in my first post that any decent pastor or priest knows what this verse means. I submit this by Barclay which I trust will be a win-win; "So then, my beloved, just as at all times you obeyed not only as in my presence, but much more, as things now are, in my absence, carry to its perfect conclusion the work of your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God, who, that he may carry out his own good pleasure, brings to effect in you both the initial willing and the effective action." (Westminster Press)
The Greek Parsing for katergazesqe (work Out) from Strong's is: V-PMM/P-2P
Part of Speech: Verb
Tense: Present
Mood: Imperative Voice: Middle or Passive
Person: 2nd Person
Number: Plural
Unlike English, Greek has both active and passive, but also middle. The middle voice is described as "self." An example in English would be, "I comb myself," self roughly meaning "to selfcomb."
The 2nd Person form of a verb is as follows;
Note the word you in both the 2nd Person singular and plural.
From Strong's Verb Parsing above, the tense and mood is present imperative. The Present Imperative is often a call or command to a long-term commitment and calls for the attitude or action to be one's continual way of life (lifestyle). It has nothing to do with an outside agent acting upon you.
Lastly, and I hope this will put this to rest, I said in my first post that any decent pastor or priest knows what this verse means. I submit this by Barclay which I trust will be a win-win; "So then, my beloved, just as at all times you obeyed not only as in my presence, but much more, as things now are, in my absence, carry to its perfect conclusion the work of your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God, who, that he may carry out his own good pleasure, brings to effect in you both the initial willing and the effective action." (Westminster Press)
Strong!
The "scholar" who says "aionion"--from which we get "eon" or "age"-- is correctly translated "eternity; forever and ever; without end"
Quote:
any decent pastor or priest knows what this verse means
And certainly these "decent pastors" have no personal bias on which direction this scripture leans based on that bias. Noooooo, of course not!
I'm pretty sure I didn't say God was messed up. My stand all along has been that sacred text lost long ago to time has been mangled so badly by translation from 3rd-century copies of copies of copies of Koine Greek manuscripts to modern Greek then to medieval English then to reformation English and then to modern English and through about 50,000 rewrites in between, and gotten so "messed up" in the process that even Mike can't help but prove my point, which he just did.
So which reading is right: 1."work out your salvation with fear and trembling" or 2."with fear and trembling work out your salvation" or 3. "with fear and trembling your salvation is being worked out"?
Each phrase has its own meaning. Mike just told me
See, even Mike can't agree which voice he's working with. So Mike chooses middle voice and I choose passive voice and in doing so he chooses one interpretation and I choose the other, but each interpretation has its own meaning and its own consequences.
I've demonstrated the vast difference between working out your own salvation and having your own salvation worked out for you. And you can choose to listen to Mike's interpretation, which he claims is right and backed by 25+ Biblical scholars or you can choose to listen to my interpretation which I claim is right and backed by 25+ scholars.
Does all this sound familiar? It should. We've been down this path in here literally a thousand times with eternal torment vs annihilation vs universal redemption.
So who is right, adner? Mike or I? It's a 50-50 crapshoot.
And I rest my case.
Do not twist what I said. I told you that it is listed as either a middle or a passive voice and that the context indicates that it is middle voice which means that the person is performing the action. I then told you that while the Holy Spirit actually causes the spiritual growth, it is the believer who must make the decisions to learn and apply the Word of God. I told you plainly that the imperative mood is a command for the person to do something.
And I also told you that the voice is in the Greek. Now since the voice is in the Greek, then how on earth can you claim that the English translation is changing the meaning. Do you even understand what I am saying here?
The only thing that you have demonstrated is that you will not listen to anyone and that you have a propensity for making sensationalistic claims about things that you do not understand.
I can give the exact breakdown of the Greek words and how they were put into incorrect order for you, Mike, if you like. The verse is clearly wrong. God would NEVER throw responsibility for working out our salvation into our laps when He would do a much better job of it. That should be clear to any level-headed thinking Christian.
A level headed christian does not believe he is a vile eternal hell(no such place) deserving sinner, whose heart is desperately wicked. He is one of love, peace and a sound mind that sees himself created in the image of God that possesses all things that pertain to life and godliness. This kind of christian has no problem working out what God worked in.
His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
God is NOT the bible. I wish people would make a note of that.
True. But it is God's Word.
Quote:
"Thus says the Lord" occurs over 400 times in the Old Testament.
"God said" occurs 42 times in the Old Testament and four times in the New Testament.
"God spoke" occurs 9 times in the Old Testament and 3 times in the New Testament.
"The Spirit of the Lord spoke" through people in 2 Sam. 23:2; 1 Kings 22:24; 2 Chron. 20:14.
The Bible has been attacked, maligned, and criticized yet remains intact, relevant and impacting the lives of those unafraid of it's words.
The Bible faithfully records the birth, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, Savior of the world, sent to us by a loving God as the only means of securing an eternal life in His presence. Just as his only begotten son was rejected by those he brought the good news, the Bible-not as God, but as God's Word-is too rejected.
My stand all along has been that sacred text lost long ago to time has been mangled so badly by translation from 3rd-century copies of copies of copies of Koine Greek manuscripts to modern Greek then to medieval English then to reformation English and then to modern English and through about 50,000 rewrites in between, and gotten so "messed up" in the process that even Mike can't help but prove my point, which he just did.
What I don't understand is how this line of reasoning holds water since we don't have the original autographs to compare side by side with what we do have. There is no way to prove that what you've said is accurate without the originals to back up the claim. I'm not trying to be harsh, but it comes across that it's not so much whether the Bible deviates from the originals, but that you simply do not like most of what the Bible has to say.
My stand all along has been that sacred text lost long ago to time has been mangled so badly by translation from 3rd-century copies of copies of copies of Koine Greek manuscripts to modern Greek then to medieval English then to reformation English and then to modern English and through about 50,000 rewrites in between, and gotten so "messed up" in the process that even Mike can't help but prove my point, which he just did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pastorALly
What I don't understand is how this line of reasoning holds water since we don't have the original autographs to compare side by side with what we do have. There is no way to prove that what you've said is accurate without the originals to back up the claim. I'm not trying to be harsh, but it comes across that it's not so much whether the Bible deviates from the originals, but that you simply do not like most of what the Bible has to say.
Aside from the fact that contrary to Thrillobyte's claim that I proved his point when in fact he was shown to be wrong concerning Phil. 2:12, experts in the field of Biblical textual criticism state that the Bible as we have it today is accurate. Here are some quotes.
F. F. Bruce (1910-1990) was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, England. He stated...
Fortunately, if the great number of MSS increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is not so large as might be feared; it is in truth remarkably small. The variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the New Testament affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice. [The New Testament Documents; Are They Reliable?, F.F. Bruce, pgs. 14-15.]
Bruce Metzger (1914-2007) was one of the most highly regarded scholars of Greek, New Testament, and New Testament Textual Criticism. He served on the board of the American Bible Society and United Bible Societies and was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. He commented...
But the amount of evidence for the text of the New Testament , whether derived from manuscripts, early versions, or patristic quotations is so much greater than that available for any ancient classical author that the necessity of resorting to emendation is reduced to the smallest dimensions. [The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, Fourth Edition, Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, pg. 230]
Daniel B. Wallace (PhD, Dallas Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament Studies. He is a member of the Society of New Testament Studies, the Institute for Biblical Research, and has consulted on several Bible translations. He made these comments...
To sum up the evidence on the number of variants, there are a lot of variants because there are a lot of manuscripts. Even in the early centuries, the text of the NT is found in a sufficient number of MSS, versions, and writings of the church fathers to give us the essentials of the original text. [Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament, Daniel B. Wallace, pg. 40]
Even Bart D. Ehrman who puts a skeptical spin on things when writing for the general public made the following statement in a college textbook as quoted by Dan Wallace in 'Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament' on pg. 24...
"In spite of these remarkable differences, scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable (although probably not 100 percent) accuracy."
Ehrman wrote that in a college textbook called 'The New Testament: A Historical Introduction To the Early Christian Writings', 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pg. 481.
In an article by Dan Wallace, he wrote...
'Though textual criticism cannot yet produce certainty about the exact wording of the original, this uncertainty affects only about two percent of the text. And in that two percent support always exists for what the original said--never is one left with mere conjecture. In other words it is not that only 90 percent of the original text exists in the extant Greek manuscripts--rather, 110 percent exists. Textual criticism is not involved in reinventing the original; it is involved in discarding the spurious, in burning the dross to get to the gold.' [The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical?
Study By: Daniel B. Wallace The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical? | Bible.org - Worlds Largest Bible Study Site
I agree that people who criticize the Bible do so because they do not like what it says.
I didn't mean to switch the focus of this thread to one of "can we trust the texts we have?" I did it, I realize.
My point is that that Mike clearly states the Greek word for "working out" is either middle or passive voice and the "context" is middle. But context is a purely subjective thing. What the scriptures say to one person they say differently to another. To me the scripture comes off as passive. "Passive" I was always taught in schools is "The students are taught by the teacher", so in this case the passive would be "you salvation is being worked out". But again a person's bias will direct them to the interpretation which they are driven toward.
And frankly, on a purely practical level who would you rather have working on your salvation--God or yourself?
01-26-2014, 10:39 AM
2K5Gx2km
n/a posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike555
Aside from the fact that contrary to Thrillobyte's claim that I proved his point when in fact he was shown to be wrong concerning Phil. 2:12, experts in the field of Biblical textual criticism state that the Bible as we have it today is accurate. Here are some quotes.
F. F. Bruce (1910-1990) was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, England. He stated...
Fortunately, if the great number of MSS increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is not so large as might be feared; it is in truth remarkably small. The variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the New Testament affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice. [The New Testament Documents; Are They Reliable?, F.F. Bruce, pgs. 14-15.]
Bruce Metzger (1914-2007) was one of the most highly regarded scholars of Greek, New Testament, and New Testament Textual Criticism. He served on the board of the American Bible Society and United Bible Societies and was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. He commented...
But the amount of evidence for the text of the New Testament , whether derived from manuscripts, early versions, or patristic quotations is so much greater than that available for any ancient classical author that the necessity of resorting to emendation is reduced to the smallest dimensions. [The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, Fourth Edition, Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, pg. 230]
Daniel B. Wallace (PhD, Dallas Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament Studies. He is a member of the Society of New Testament Studies, the Institute for Biblical Research, and has consulted on several Bible translations. He made these comments...
To sum up the evidence on the number of variants, there are a lot of variants because there are a lot of manuscripts. Even in the early centuries, the text of the NT is found in a sufficient number of MSS, versions, and writings of the church fathers to give us the essentials of the original text. [Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament, Daniel B. Wallace, pg. 40]
Even Bart D. Ehrman who puts a skeptical spin on things when writing for the general public made the following statement in a college textbook as quoted by Dan Wallace in 'Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament' on pg. 24...
"In spite of these remarkable differences, scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable (although probably not 100 percent) accuracy."
Ehrman wrote that in a college textbook called 'The New Testament: A Historical Introduction To the Early Christian Writings', 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pg. 481.
In an article by Dan Wallace, he wrote...
'Though textual criticism cannot yet produce certainty about the exact wording of the original, this uncertainty affects only about two percent of the text. And in that two percent support always exists for what the original said--never is one left with mere conjecture. In other words it is not that only 90 percent of the original text exists in the extant Greek manuscripts--rather, 110 percent exists. Textual criticism is not involved in reinventing the original; it is involved in discarding the spurious, in burning the dross to get to the gold.' [The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical?
Study By: Daniel B. Wallace The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical? | Bible.org - Worlds Largest Bible Study Site
Mike555 always posts these quotes numerous times in a thread as if they actually prove something - they don't and they are out of context and the conclusions drawn by Mike555 are invalid.
Here is another thread since it is off topic from the OP where he re-quotes this like 10 times and never answers, sufficiently, any of the responses.
My responses start at post #356 - see particularly #391.
As to the Ehrman quote, since it is out of context, seemingly just is referring to what certain other scholars think they are capable of doing despite the remarkable differences pointed out by Ehrman.
All this adds up to is quote mining and appeals to authority - not that this will stop him from re-posting this series of quotes for the millionth time.
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