Koine Greek

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Have you ever read an exegetical commentary that focused on obscure points of grammar so much that you actually learned nothing? Have you ever slammed a dense commentary shut, fearful you’d be drowned by a flood of eager, but meaningless, syntactical analysis? In this brilliant parody, New Testament scholar Moises Silva provides a cautionary tale for us all … ¹

William Mounce: Certainly a frustrating passage, and one that shows a word-for-word translation isn’t always translation since it can be meaningless.

William Mounce: There is a reason for every word, even if we don’t understand why it is used.

William Mounce: In first year Greek, we teachers need to make a bigger deal of Aktionsart. Meaning isn’t conveyed just by the meaning of the word, or its tense, or its aspect. Language gives us many tools to nuance what we want to say, and our students need to know that meaning can also help convey aspect.

Bill Mounce: Do you hear [Mt 28:6] as an active or a divine passive?

William Mounce: What do you rely on in your preaching and teaching?

Bill Mounce: I have no trouble avoiding “man” when the meaning is clearly inclusive of women and men,” but I do struggle when a translation loses so much of the meaning of the passage.

Bill Mounce: I am disturbed by the NLT’s translation of Acts 27.

Bill Mounce: While all translations are interpretive, dynamic are more interpretive than formal equivalent translations, and that increased danger can miss the point being made by the text, especially poetry.

Bill Mounce: The KJV’s use of “desert places” is unfortunate. I suspect that for most of us “desert” evokes images of the Mohave or Sahara desert. As desolate as rural Palestine was in the first century, it certainly was not filled with sand dunes. The NKJV’s adjustment to “country” is better, but as I say above it is not best.