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I wrote a paper on James 2:14-26 a few years back. Here's a link. TRANSLATION 14: What (is) the benefit, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? That faith is not able to save them (is it)? 15: Suppose a brother or a sister is naked and lacking of daily bread, 16: and someone from you (pl.) says to them, “Go ...

The answer to this question is twofold. Holman Bible Dictionary has an article that explains how quotations are signified in the New Testament. The most common way to identify quotations in the new testament is by wording (especially verbage) that indicates something has been said or written elsewhere or earlier. Quotations From the Scripture/Word: “as ...

While punctuation did not exist in the original manuscripts, there are good reasons for preferring in our translations the rendering, "Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise." Here are several arguments in support of this conclusion: In "I say unto thee today," the word "today" is rather superfluous. Quite clearly Jesus is talking ...

I think this is a clear Matthean addition: And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”—Mark 10:11-12 (ESV) “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced ...

If you read the text straight through without the division into chapters, chapter 28 seems to flow naturally from the end of 27 -- the chapter division almost seems to be in the middle of a thought. I don't know why the chapters were divided the way they were, but they are not in the original text. Chapters 29-31 read clearly as one discourse. So I don't ...

Zechariah 1:6 reads: אַךְ דְּבָרַי וְחֻקַּי אֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתִי אֶת-עֲבָדַי הַנְּבִיאִים הֲלוֹא הִשִּׂיגוּ אֲבֹתֵיכֶם But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? So far the translation is without special problems. The language of "laws overtaking" someone is used in Deuteronomy 28:15. ...

Zechariah was a prophet to those who had begun to return from their exile in Babylon, which was the ‘judgment that overtook their fathers’, to whom the former prophets cried out. Prophets like Isaiah, Micah and Jeremiah specifically cried out against them before the exile, but all other post exilic prophets did as well. These prophets prophesied that Israel ...

The key to understanding this very difficult verse in James, and therefore for providing a proposed clarifying translation, is found in Genesis 15:6, which alludes to Abraham's faith as the basis of righteousness. When we compare the citations of Genesis 15:6 to other places in the Bible where this verse is quoted, then we will be better able to understand ...

While other people have suggested that it is the prophet himself speaking - in which case the passage shouldn't be in quotes - it seems best to me to understand the speaker to be God quoting Ephraim and Judah after he has carried through with the things prophesied at the end of chapter 5. God speaking in verse 5:14 says: For I will be like a lion to ...