[B-Greek] Was SKUBALON a swear/vulgar word?

Peter Hamm peter at hamm-multimedia.com
Mon May 23 13:38:15 EDT 2005


There is one more issue here, which is the one of English usage. I have
heard it argued that our "S-word" for excrement was not always considered as
"vulgar" as it is now considered to be. And it doesn't seem to have the same
offensiveness in every English-speaking country, either, does it?

Also, we must be careful not to judge Paul's use of a word's "vulgarity" by
it's possible English counterpart. Remember what you learned the first day
you studied Greek... languages are NOT codes! I think we can all use our
imagination to think what "brood of vipers" would translate into in today's
language. But that would be to ignore the historical and cultural
significance of the metaphor that was used.

However, BDAG does use the word "crap" to define SKUBALON... I don't think I
saw that mentioned.

Now... Enough of this "crappy" discussion?... ;-P

Peter Hamm





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