Hot answers tagged matthew
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The Pharisees were trying to trap Him. They thought they had an air tight dilemma. If Jesus says "pay the taxes," it will turn the common people (the people of the land) against Him. It would also turn the zealots against Him. If He said, "don't pay taxes," then the Herodians (agents of the king) have it from His mouth that He is fomenting rebellion. If ...
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This argument is incorrect. Participles have a wide range of interpretive possibilities and sometimes choosing the correct one is difficult. Here is a resource that may help as I go along.
The argument that since βαπτίζοντες follows μαθητεύσατε it must mean that it is a later action is a grammar myth along the lines of the abused aorist.
So, it is true ...
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A little bit of Friday, Saturday and a little bit of Sunday could be properly describe as three days and nights in Biblical language. We think of days as 24 hour periods but they included in their common expressions a 'day' as 'any part of a day, or 'touching any part of a calendar day'. The term 'three days and three nights' was a Jewish expression that ...
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There have been several proposed reconciliations of the Matthew and Luke genealogies. Among the popular ones are:
Matthew's genealogy traces legal heirs; Luke's traces biological ancestors.
Matthew's genealogy traces the ancestry of Joseph; Luke's traces the ancestry of Mary. This view takes the phrase "as was supposed of Joseph" in 3:23 as a parenthetical ...
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The Greek is πραεῖς, which has also been translated gentle.
According to this source, the word was used to describe a horse that had been broken-in among other similar usages.
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I noticed that none of the current answers explicitly address the question of whether meek is a good English translation. Given the modern connotations of the word meek, it is not a good translation (though it may have been at one time), because in the modern usage it has a sense of craven pandering—the word, at least in my mind, has a derogatory ...
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This is a big question and I think it will help to refactor it into some related questions:
What did Jesus see as his mission?
From the passages you cited and the fact that Jesus spent most of his time teaching Jews, it's not a stretch to say that Jesus saw his mission as limited to Israel. Now Jesus did go into the region of the Decapolis, which began as ...
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This is an attempt to give a brief theological answer, an answer that examines the words in their contexts and in their broader theological context, rather than a lexical investigation.
The fool in Psalm 14/53 and in Proverbs is someone who is in moral antithesis to God. This is not an insult or a slur; it is an accurate description of the state of his ...
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Raca means "empty headed," very similar to how we use "fool" today. Jesus also uses moros in that verse, which is the root of moron. While we normally need to take care not to commit the root fallacy, this one does mean the same thing.
The word used in Hebrew is nabal which has more to do with consistently making bad moral choices. Brown, Driver, Briggs ...
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One explanation is that the Hebrew נֵ֫צֶר "branch" (transliterated nazer, netser or so) is related to Nazarene. Isaiah's usage of the word can be seen as prophetic, especially in Isaiah 11:1:
Source / Further reading:
Miller, Fred P. Isaiah's Use of the word "Branch" or Nazarene.
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"Brothers" in Greek
The Greek word for "brothers" here is adelphoi (Strongs G80). This means literally "brothers". However, it can also mean "countryman" or "followers".
The NET Bible (which uses the most current translation, taking advantage of the latest in linguistic scholarship) translates this as "brothers and sisters". The footnote for this says ...
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The Hebrew for the phrase is:
וְרֹכֵב עַל-חֲמוֹר, וְעַל-עַיִר בֶּן-אֲתֹנוֹת.
NJPS translates this as:
and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass.
Some translations have "an ass and a colt". The Hebrew isn't clear about the number of animals.
The word גַּם means "also" in biblical Hebrew. We see it, for example, in Genesis 33, ...
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I. Howard Marshall gives a concise statement of the options for harmonization in his commentary:
It is quite possible that Matthew or Luke is simply reporting what was commonly said in Jerusalem, and that we are not meant to harmonize the two accounts. If we do try to harmonzie (sic) them, the following possibilities arise: (1). Judas hanged himself ...
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The Greek word is οπηειλεμα(3783), which according to Strong's means
1) that which is owed 1a) that which is justly or legally due, a debt 2) metaph. offence, sin
The word comes from οπηειλο(3784):
1) to owe 1a) to owe money, be in debt for 1a1) that which is due, the debt 2) metaph. the goodwill due
So a literal translation would be "debt", ...
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What he's saying here can easily be understood as "What you have said is true."
We can see this more clearly when we look at a parallel accounting of the event found in Mark:
Mark 14:61b-62a (NASB)
Again the high priest was questioning Him, and saying to Him, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” And Jesus said, “I am."
So, in Mark he ...
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As far as the relevant wedding customs, Chuck Missler explains the traditional custom fairly well, as follows:
1) Betrothal - the marriage covenent is established, a price for the bride is negotiated and paid by the groom to the bride's family. There were also some symbolic rituals involved, but that's not so relevant to the question at hand.
2) ...
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There are a few suggestion as to why Matthew describes two people compared to the single person in the Markan and Lukan accounts.
That Matthew is implying that there were other exorcisms (e.g. Mark 1:23ff) or blind-healings (e.g. Mark 8:22ff) and uses extras to compensate
That it's introduced to provide symmetry as a 'popular folk motiff' (this from, I ...
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While these two statements may seem self-contradictory, there is a fine line which differentiates them.
TL;DR: Matthew 5:16 says you should not ever be ashamed to do God's work in public. However, Matthew 6:1 warns that you should also not do these works in public simply for the sake of public attention.
The commandment for us to shine our light is ...
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External Evidence
Matthew is almost unanimously testified as the oldest gospel by the church fathers. Clement of Alexandria even supported both Matthew and Luke as before Mark. This is significant because Mark is said to have founded the Coptic branch of Christianity in Alexandria, Egypt. If any place were to argue for Markan priority, Egypt would be ...
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Theophilus was the Patriarch and seventh bishop of Antioch; he died in approximately 181-185 A.D. The Greek text below is from the third book, thirteenth chapter (Book III, Ch. XIII) of his apologia (defense) to Autolycus, who himself was a Pagan friend of Theophilus. An English translation by Philip Schaff is available at the Christian Classics Ethereal ...
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I'm surprised no one mentioned Matthew 26:25! It's the same chapter:
And Judas, who was betraying Him, said, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?” Jesus said to him, “ You have said it yourself.” (KJV)
No one questions what Jesus meant here, do they? Same exact phrase is used. There is no question that Jesus's answer is an affirmation, just as in verse 64 He ...
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While elsewhere in the New Testament marriage is used as a picture of Christ and his bride, that does not imply that the same picture should be imported into every parable and saying of Jesus. Consider Jesus' words elsewhere in Matthew:
Then John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not ...
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There were many things that Matthew did not understand about the ministry of Christ until after Jesus death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. The references that the prophets made about the Messiah were likely high on that list. The beauty of most of the references about the messiah is that they were already understood in the historical context which ...
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The root κοπιαω (κοπιωντες is the present active participle form) does include both the idea of 1) the passive state of being weary from labor and 2) the activity of hard labor, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. I think the difference between those two ideas is more a difference of perspective than of essential meaning.
In a strictly grammatical sense, ...
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Many translations do use "And" or rephrase to avoid needing to insert a word there at all. The Majority Text looks like this:
εγω δε λεγω υμιν οτι πας ο οργιζομενος τω αδελφω αυτου εικη ενοχος εσται τη κρισει ος δ αν ειπη τω αδελφω αυτου ρακα ενοχος εσται τω συνεδριω ος δ αν ειπη μωρε ενοχος εσται εις την γεενναν του πυρος
I've bolded the word de ...
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I think you have it right there in the difference between what you quoted - the Lord's Prayer doesn't say "do not tempt us" (and James agrees as to why) and James does not say "God does not allow people to be dragged away and enticed" (which would make the world a very different place).
A prominent example of God explicitly allowing someone to be tempted is ...
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Both Psalm 14 and 53 use the word nabal <05036> which can be translated:
foolish, senseless, fool
It comes from nabel <05034>, which has a literal meaning of:
to wilt; generally, to fall away, fail, faint
The foolish meaning is figurative. Perhaps the idea is that such a person is corrupt or morally weak.
As a side note, there's very ...
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The ambiguity comes from a difference between the Hebrew Old Testament and the Septuagint (a Greek translation). Jesus is teaching to forgive by reversing the statement of Lamech in Genesis 4.
Gen 4:24 "If Cain is avenged sevenfold, Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold." (NASB)
The NASB follows the Hebrew which has שִׁבְעִים וְשִׁבְעָֽה (shib'iym wshib'ah), ...
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Since the question concerns just Micah 5:5-6 (ESV), let's quote that alone:
And he shall be their peace. When the Assyrian comes into our land and treads in our palaces, then we will raise against him seven shepherds and eight princes of men; they shall shepherd the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod at its entrances; and he shall ...
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Numerology
A recent question linked to a reference of meaning of various numbers in the Bible and this passage seem to be the primary source of meaning for the number 14. None of the other references seem particularly compelling and seem to be included for data-mining purposes. I would say that the number 14 has no particular meaning in the Bible outside ...
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