[B-Greek] Jn 1:1 - Alternate Reading?
David Lang
dlang at accordancebible.com
Wed Oct 4 18:38:47 EDT 2006
On Oct 4, 2006, at 4:12 PM, mike.murphy at pb.com wrote:
> The word "theos" is translated as "godly" in the King James
> Version at least 5 times, (1 Tim 1:4, 2 Cor 1:12, 7:9, 7:11, and
> 11:2). The possible alternate reading would be, "In beginning was
> the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was godly. The
> same was in the beginning with God."
Strong's numbers are a helpful tool for getting at the Greek words
behind an English translation, but this is an excellent example of
how looking at Strong's numbers alone can be misleading.
When I searched the KJV for cases where the word "godly" is tagged
with the Strong number for "theos," I found seven occurrences (2Cor
1:12; 7:9, 10, 11; 11:2; 1Tim 1:4; 3John 1:6). If you look at the
actual Greek text, however, you find that in all of these cases, the
word "theos" is either in the genitive case or it is the object of
the preposition "kata" (according to). The KJV translators used the
adjective "godly" rather than more wooden renderings like "jealously
of God" or "the sorrow which is after the manner of God." But as
someone else has pointed out, in all of these cases the noun "theos"
technically refers to "God."
Sincerely,
David Lang
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