Short answer: no. Long answer: While the Greek lacks the definite article on theos in the clause under discussion, that doesn't mean the English should be translated with an indefinite article. ...
In support of the human sacrifice theory, Kaiser in Hard Sayings of the Bible says: People, even servants of God, do horrid things. This era was very corrupt and there is no reason to see Jephthah ...
First Enoch (or the Ethiopic Enoch) stands alone among the Jewish apocalypses for length, diversity, and richness.1 No other ancient non-canonical work influenced the Jewish world of the first century ...
Jon gives a good answer as to why Jesus would have been able to speak Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew. He also asked for more information regarding the existence of Hebrew in the Land at the time of Jesus. ...
The position in the question, that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not original to Matthew 28:19 is held today by very few scholars. Those that do point to a quotation from the early church historian ...
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 ...
To answer your first question, we should not simply accept Sinaiticus as "the source of the truth for the New Testament". It has great weight in debates from its age, but age is not the final arbiter ...
This apparent contradiction can be resolved without the documentary hypothesis. As Bruce Alderman pointed out, Gen 17 is considered an E passage, yet it uses YHWH in the very first verse. Similarly, ...
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 ...
Noah has given an excellent answer, but I would like to give other issues with Aramaic primacy. There are NT fragments in Greek that are older than anything in Aramaic. Very early fragments. The ...
I believe your first option is the best but with a little modification. Moses originally had an Egyptian name that sounded almost exactly like a Hebrew name. The pun involved in the name is ...
Enuma Elish and Genesis have the strongest connection in their first lines--"In the beginning" vs. "When on high." Some say that Genesis is written as a polemic against Enuma Elish. They are very ...
More on the linguistics for an early date. It is more proper to say that Hebrew had changed drastically by the 2nd century BC. Lingual shifts had happened but it was still a living language. The ...
The first two reasons are easy to understand with Balaam being a pagan prophet. After all his encounters with God and the angel threatening to kill him, Balaam doesn't dare do anything except speak ...
The events of Act 15 are dated to AD 48. It is worth noting that Paul and Barnabas solved the immediate problem in a good way. When compromise was impossible ("I want X," "Not a chance&...
Satan is the father of Cain in that Cain acted like Satan. Genesis tells us that Adam (literally "the man") fathered Cain and Abel. Genesis 4:1 Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she ...
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:...
They are stoning him, and as such take him outside the city to a pit. There, they will strip him and hurl rocks on him until he dies. They are to aim for the chest, but precision is impossible. ...
No. The tetragrammaton was not used in Jesus' time. Faithful Jews would avoid saying it so as to not transgress the third commandment. The most common circumlocution was "Lord" (Andonai in Hebrew or ...
I did look into this for a paper on Revelation and First Enoch (The Canonicity of Apocalyptic Literature). Whenever it was written, Revelation aims to encourage Christians during an imperial ...
From the IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament: 8:17. "branch to the nose." There is an Akkadian expression (laban appi) that refers to a gesture of humility used to come ...
I disagree with Young's there. Hebrew syntax is very different than English, but I have difficulty seeing how Young got there. Tense in Biblical Hebrew is non-existent (Essentials of Biblical Hebrew,...
There are some very close similarities but also some drastic differences. For similarities, there are a hero who builds a boat to preserve those chosen by a god. They build the boat with levels ...
The similar command in Matthew 10:37 shows that the ancient world understood this saying of Jesus to be not complete hatred 37 "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy ...
Something interesting I noticed in the Hebrew of Gen 1 is that almost every verse begins with a waw-consecutive. That is a grammatical construct that indicates a direct, chronological sequence. That ...
Stephen's interpretation is called "telescoping," conflating two very similar accounts into one. Telescoping was not an unusual phenomenon in the Land at the time. (Bruce, FF. The Book of Acts: New ...
Some say the "Kingdom of Heaven" refers to the a physical/political kingdom on earth while the "Kingdom of God" is the spiritual, coming reign of Christ. Arguments against the two ...
Note: Since some gap theory arguments rely on phrasing in the King James, I will be quoting from the KJV unless otherwise noted. All verses will be examined in the KJV, other versions will be listed ...
This name for the early Christians is unique to this passage of Paul on trial. While Tertullus, the prosecutor in this case, intended the word to be derogatory, a sect was not a cult. A sect then was ...
Gesenius in his Hebrew Grammar (Kautzsch/Cowley edition, commonly GKC) spends several pages on "Agreement between Members of a Sentence, especially between Subject and Predicate in respect of ...