Recent content by John of Japan

We're just going to have to agree to disagree here. I find it completely compatible to a literal 7 year view. Revelation is literature, and I've read a lot of fiction and non-fiction with historical flashbacks or references or whatever you want to call it. Just finishing today a 300 page book...

My brother wrote a book which was a combination biography of John R. Rice and a polemic against slavery. It had a modern perspective, but dealt with an ancestor of ours who had slaves in Missouri. Thus, it is a modern polemic with historical perspective. (See it at The Sword of the Lord: The...

I love doing it, and never think of it as tedious. It does take time and thought, though. And it is a gift of God, so that not anyone can do it. Wannabes are not welcome. In one of his early books, Eugene Nida told the story of a man who wrote the United Bible Society and said, "If you would...

It's not a big problem to me at all. I have a much harder time interpreting the book allegorically than I do with a plain sense historical reference. There are so many, many things in the book of Revelation that an allegorical interpretation cannot answer. When we allow allegorical...

Download e-sword for free at: e-Sword: Free Bible Study for the PC. It has good (though quite old) lexicons, easily accessible, for the Hebrew OT (BDB lexicon) and the Greek NT (Thayer's). Look at the passage for the context, then choose the meaning in the lexicon that best fits the meaning in...

One seldom knows with him, does one? :Coffee

Every time the original text is the plural of anthropos (ἄνθρωπος) it is possible to translate it as "people." On the hand, aner (ἀνήρ), occurring in 193 verses, should almost always be translated "man" or "husband." But footnotes are great. I love 'em!

Once again this is anthropos, and can by the best linguistics be translated as "persons," including men and women, because it is a plural. I think "humanity" is a mistake, though. That's a singular, and inaccurate.

I just saw my daughter-in-law: fluent in her native language (she's not from here) and English, has studied Greek, has two masters' and a nursing degree. But more than that, she is an awesome wife to my only son, and wonderful mother to my two granddaughters. It's a sin to elevate her...

For anyone who wants to study this issue out more deeply, here are two books: The Inclusive Debate, by D. A. Carson. This is on the side of gender neutral language, but Carson is a conservative scholar. The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy, by Vern Poythress and Wayne Grudem. This is on the...

No, the term is "authorial intent," and it is about the inspiration of Scripture. If you believe in verbal plenary inspiration, then you believe that God wrote what He wanted (through human authors) in the original mss of the Word of God. Right! Except they succeed in different ways than men...

If we render "brothers" as "brothers and sisters, we are no longer translating according to authorial intent, but with dynamic/functional equivalence, which weights the rendering towards the modern reader ("reader response" theory). I believe authorial intent--what God actually intended the...

There are two different issues here. One is actually feminism. I remember when adjustments were made back in the day to translations in the name of gender equality, which is a feminist issue. That's where the "brothers and sisters" rendering came from, nothing more or less than gender equality...

Interesting topic. Here is my objection to gender neutral renderings. It is taking a modern movement (feminism) and inserts it into a document 2000 years or more old. News flash: there were no feminists or "gender equality" in the 1st century!!! This practice is called anachronism, and is...

No, I don't think I ever met him. But one meets a lot of people on deputation whose name then escapes!