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

George F Somsel gfsomsel at juno.com
Mon May 23 14:00:46 EDT 2005


On Mon, 23 May 2005 13:38:15 -0400 "Peter Hamm"
<peter at hamm-multimedia.com> writes:
> 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
____________________

Just an historical note unrelated to Greek.  The flush toilet was
invented by a man named Thomas Crapper hence the origin of the term.

george
gfsomsel
___________



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