Reddit reviews A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd Edition

At the risk of a flood of down votes... you're wrong. I can't defend any Christian who uses the Old Testament to condemn homosexuality, since OT references seem to be referring to laws of a theocratic Jewish state which are abrogated by Jesus' teaching (that's why Christians never worried about wearing mixed fabrics or killing sassy children, even in the early days of the Church). Shame on anyone who tries to resurrect these verses to condemn homosexuality now; the criticism they receive is just.

However, the New Testament rejection of homosexuality is direct, encompassing, and clear.

The three most important scholarly English-Language studies of Romans in the last century have been by Robert Jewett, CEB Cranfield (Volume 1), (Volume 2), and James D.G. Dunn (Volume 1), (Volume 2). Of these, Jewett probably writes from what could be considered to be a "secular" perspective, the other two are objectively worded, but are more religiously oriented. None of these studies minces any words about Paul's intent in condemning homosexuality.

Commenting on Paul's inclusion of lesbians in the condemnation of homosexuality, Jewett writes that the verses in Romans 1 are "a negative judgement" on "women's homoeroticism... [not] women engaging in oral or anal intercourse with males" (176). While Jewett clearly frowns on such an "old fashioned" idea, he writes "there is no mistaking that... Paul... is convinced that heterosexuality was part of the divinely created order for human kind.. the evidence in this verse is particularly damaging to the hypothesis that the critique of homosexuality in this periscope aims solely to attack pederasty and thus has no bearing on homo erotic relationships between adults." (pp. 177). Of verse 1:27, he writes (again with a disproving tone towards Paul's old-fashioned morals), "Paul simply follows the line of his Jewish cultural tradition by construing the entire realm of homosexual relations as evidence that the divine wrath was active therein" (pp. 179). So Jewett, in the most important single work on Romans in the 21st century, sees Paul's morality as antiquated, old fashioned, and of little value, but has no doubt that he is talking about real homosexual relationships, not rape.

I won't waste space quoting the other two, but they both follow suit on this verse: there is no way Paul could be talking about pederasts, rapists, or anything other than consensual adult homosexuals.

As to Paul's condemnation of homosexuality in 1st Corinthians, Hans Conzelmann, a German scholar who is very liberal, writes "[Paul is talking here about]... both passive and active homosexuality. The Jewish [=Paul's] view on the latter is unequivocal: Do not have illicit intercourse or arouse passion for another male, a quote from an extra-biblical Jewish author (pp. 106)."

Also, the BDAG Lexicon, which is the official, alpha-and-omega of New Testament Greek, has this to say about the translation of the world usually rendered "homosexuals:" "'Male prostitutes' (New Revised Standard Version) is too narrow a rendering; 'sexual pervert' is too broad." (BDAG, pp. 631)

TL;DR: The belief that Paul is talking about anything other than adult-adult consensual homosexual relationships is the New Testament scholarship equivalent of Young Earth Creationism. Writers like Bart Ehrman, though widely read in pop-media, are regarded as clowns by professional societies like SBL.

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature

My Logos Bible software gives καίπερ in the NT in 5 instances, namely Philippians 3:4, Hebrews 5:8, 7:5 and 12:17, and 2 Peter 1:12. All of the instances of καίπερ are translated with though or although. Especially 12:17 seems to indicate that you cannot translate it with "because":

> "17 For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears. "
>
>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 12:17.

It cannot be that he was rejected "because" he sought it with tears. Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with tears in 5:7, and he is not rejected because of it. Rather, his reverence gets noticed.

BDAG ( https://www.amazon.com/Greek-English-Lexicon-Testament-Christian-Literature/dp/0226039331/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=bdag&qid=1571748897&sr=8-1 ) only lists "although" as a translation, and has many verses to back it up

>καίπερ conj. (since Od. 7, 224; SIG 709, 18; 1108, 8; PGiss 47, 22; PSI 298, 17; LXX, TestJos, Joseph., Just.) although w. ptc. (so usu., also Diod S 8, 9, 2; 10, 19, 2; 17, 114, 1; Wsd 11:9; Jos., Ant. 1, 319; 3, 280; TestJos 10:5; w. finite verb Just., A I, 4, 4) Phil 3:4; Hb 5:8; 7:5; 12:17; 2 Pt 1:12. Also 1 Cl 7:7; 16:2; ISm 3:3; MPol 17:1; Hv 3, 2, 9; Hs 8, 6, 4; 8, 11, 1 (B-D-F §425, 1; Rob. 1129; FScheidweiler, καίπερ nebst e. Exkurs zum Hb: Her 83, ’55, 220–30).—M-M.

William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 497.

What may help in the interpretation is if you look at "son" as a spiritual being rather than as a literal child. I don't know if you're aware of Michael Heiser's work on spiritual beings (https://youtu.be/pKPid4i4SmI)(his book The Unseen Realm, his podcast or his videos) but according to him, sons (of God) are a type of spiritual being like angels, demons, God's heavenly host, etc.

The interpretation then becomes: "Even though Jesus was in a high position, maybe undeserving or generally unaffected by suffering because of him being a son of God, he learned obedience through what he suffered." Hebrews 1:2 tells us that God created the world through His Son, so it may be a little strange that this very son with God learns obedience by suffering.

This may fit because in the previous verse, 5:7, Hebrews talks about "in the days of his flesh". This is then contrasted with his spiritual status as son in verse 8 if you accept my speculation.

​

I think "because" is not a fitting translation. I understand why you're puzzled by the formulation and I find it a bit difficult to explain my ideas around Christ's sonship without me sounding a little wacky.

1. While aggelos is a fair transliteration of άγγελος I would opt for the phonetic pronunciation angelos; it's a bit more familiar to the English word and faithfully represents how it would have been spoken. Also, I'm not sure if this is possible on your blog but you should italicize Greek words written in the English alphabet. Also, you should make a standard, either write words in Greek or give a transliteration; don't do both. These are silly formatting issues that would make it more visually appealing.
   
   
2. If you could add a copy of BDAG that would be a great reference to talk about the nuance of Greek words. While wikitionary gives you a useful parse that you run with BDAG will explain how often that parse is used in the biblical text. Also, I think your analysis of the word in general needs some work. You appeal to a pericope from John that doesn't include genea at all. Also, you don't mention how in Matthew's gospel every other use of genea, excluding the genealogy prologue, is clearly a reference to the literal generations of people during Jesus' ministry (See Matt. 11:16; 12:39, 41, 42, 45; 16:4; 17:17). Your appeal to other biblical passages and theur use of genea is also difficult when you don't engage the issue of how the author consistently uses the word. While theologically we may believe the Bible to be inspired by God we should also recognize that it was penned by men who had their own nuanced writing style.
   
   

3. I somewhat like what you're saying and how you're taking a theological approach to interpretation. However, is there any evidence that directly links this passage to the theological concept of after-life and resurrection? Honestly, to use an analogy from Star Wars, your argument seems like Obi-Wan's arguement for misleading Luke about Darth Vader/Anakin, "It's true from a certain point of view." If you can you should make that point of view as explicit as possible. If such an explicit understanding can't be explained in the primary text than you should at least address what some critiques of your theory would be.
   
   
4. Another thing I appreciate is that you use some historic Christian scholars to emphasize your arguement, but it feels like cherry picking. I admit I honestly don't know the answer to this, but are commentators earlier than Chrysostom who provide a similar interpretation? How about between Chrysostom and Theophylact? You don't need to quote everyone but if you indirectly reference other sources as giving similar interpretations it would strengthen your arguement.
   
   
5. Similar idea as in number 3, if you think appealing to the Old Testament use of the word generation is important to understanding this passage is there textual support? You can say that Matthew is departing from his patterned use of genea and appealing to an understanding of 'generation' from the Hebrew Bible, but if you don't have evidence to back that claim it's hard to be convinced.
   
   Overall, I like what you have to say I just wish you were saying it better. There's a journal article coming out sometime either this year or next that is similar to yours. I believe it's the Journal of Biblical Literature, but I'm not certain. If you're interested I'll double check. The author has a similar dislike for N.T. Wright and R.T. France's understanding of the passage, but goes in a bit of a different direction. The biggest thing is that he appeals to the Hebrew Bible to explain 'generation', and uses solid evidence to link this passage to the Hebrew Bible.
   
   I'd just like to say, good job on dealing with a difficult passage. Have a good one.

I'm happy to interact with you about the Greek of this verse, as best I can. I am in my third semester of Greek studies for a Masters of Theology in seminary. As with most things, the more you study Greek the more you realize you don't know!

Fundamentally though, be aware that Christian scholarship works a lot like a hospital, in a sense. First, doctors, nurses, and technicians each have a core set of knowledge that they all share. Second, doctors have specialized knowledge that nurses and technicians lack, nurses have specialized knowledge that doctors and technicians lack, and so on and so on. Thirdly, the whole system relies on each person to trust in the specialized knowledge of the other people beside them.

In this way Christian scholarship is made up of many jobs, and for this topic we need a team of Language Experts, Theological Experts, and Exegetical Experts to form any serious conclusions! No one person can be an expert in all three, so we have to trust others to form a conclusion with any confidence.

Part of that means humbly admitting where we are unequipped and untrained to offer a dissenting opinion. You are very open with your lack of education in the Koine Greek, which is admirable! Please accept my loving challenge to rectify this situation over the next year of your life. You can buy Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek textbook and workbook for fairly cheap, and if you commit yourself to a chapter a week than you can acquire a surprisingly adequate understanding of the language in just 8 or 9 months! You obviously have a passion for the knowledge and the ability to pursue truth, so level-up your skills!

Back to Matthew 23:23...

>However, it appears that ἐκεῖνος is not exclusively reserved for what is far, the more distant object. All the examples I gave in my article (Matthew 15:18, Mark 12:4, John 7:29, Acts 5:37, 2 Timothy 2:12) use κἀκεῖνος (not ταῦτα) but they are clearly referring to what was near. I wonder why they did not use ταῦτα instead.

Let's look at each one of those examples, and I suspect we will see ways that English and Greek are similar, and also ways they differ. I'll be using ESV for english. But first!! Let's get some good lexicon information on εκεινος and τουτο. From BDAG

ἐκεῖνος, η, ο demonstr. pron. (Hom.+) pert. to an entity mentioned or understood and viewed as relatively remote in the discourse setting, that person, that thing, that (‘that over there’; opp. οὗτος ‘this’)

οὗτος, αὕτη, τοῦτο (Hom.+) demonstrative pron., used as adj. and subst. As subst., the person or thing comparatively near at hand in the discourse material, this, this one (contrast ἐκεῖνος referring to someth. comparatively farther away; cp. Lk 18:14; Js 4:15; Hm 3:5)

>Matt. 15:18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this [κακεινος] defiles a person.

κακεινος is actually a bit troublesome for me to research. Most lexicons have it thrown in with και which is a multi-function conjunction, so finding good information there is like finding a needle in a hay stack. The most helpful thing I've found is

>κἀκεῖνος (kakeinos), and. A compound of ἐκεῖ and καί. From The Lexham Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament (Logos Bible Software, 2011).

εκει is of course the shortened form of εκεινος, which gets us back to BDAG's lexical help which I already pasted.

So why does Matt 15:18 have κακεινος translated as "and this" instead of "and that?" BDAG tells us that εκεινος has a secondary usage, "referring back to and resuming a word immediately preceding. Often weakened to he/she/it" English actually works this way too, and you can see this by looking at Matt 15:18 and swapping out "this" for "that." It makes zero impact on the meaning of the verse because

>and this defiles a person

and

>and that defiles a person

mean the exact same thing, so using εκεινος vs τουτο is just a stylistic variance. You might be thinking, "aha, that's the same usage I was talking about in Matthew 23:23!" but remember that Mt. 23:23 has a clear "this ... that ..." structure, leaving no ambiguity as to the meaning of εκεινος in that context. In all these examples where it takes the secondary use, it is meaning "that one" like you might point to a donut in a donut shop and say, "give me that one." Greek uses this as a transition between clauses way more than English does. Back to the donut store analogy, they might often say, "I would like a chocolate donut, that one with the sprinkles." You see that it is still being demonstrative, but is not primarily communicating a distance.

>Mark 12:4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him [εκεινος] on the head and treated him shamefully.

This is another case where εκεινος is taking the secondary usage, and is also being weakened to a pronoun. The full literal translation would be:

>And again he sent to them another servant, and that one they beat over the head and dishonored.

This is awkward phrasing for English so the "and that one" gets weakened into "and ... him."

>John 7:29 I know him, for I come from him, and he [κακεινος] sent me.

This is similar to Mark 12:4 where the literal translation would end up "and that one sent me," which is awkward English phrasing, so it gets translated/weakened to "and he" because it makes more sense to the English reader.

>Acts 5:37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too [κακεινος] perished, and all who followed him were scattered.

This is, again, the same usage :) The literal translation for that would be, "and he withdrew people after himself; and that one was destroyed." Again, referring to someone as a "that one" is awkward in English, so it becomes "he" instead. I'm not sure where the "too" comes from, it might be from the context of the narrative, or it might be an implication of the εκεινος.

>2 Tim 2:12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he [κακεινος] also will deny us;

This whole verse is obscure when translated literally and carries a lot of implied subjects. It goes

>If we endure, then we will reign with; If we deny (future tense!), and that one will deny us.

Translators add in the implied "him" when it is needed, and turn the [κακεινος] into a pronoun once again, this time completely dropping the "and" that would naturally come out of the και in κακεινος.

So that's all of them! The demonstrative εκεινος can mean "that one" like "that one right there" or "that one we I just mentioned," and when it is used weakly it can even be interchangeable with τουτο (pointing and saying "I would like this donut" instead of "I would like that donut", means the same thing!).

I'll go ahead and submit this and reply to it in order to continue the Greek topic.

The greek word is μοναὶ, which is the feminine plural nominative form of μονή, which is in turn the noun form of the verb "μένω" which means, "I dwell, remain, or abide"

So it just means "In my father's house, there are many dwellings/places to live."

The word mansion comes from the Latin word manere, which means "to remain or dwell", which borrows the term from the Greek.

So "mansions" is technically an accurate translation, but I don't think the word meant to evoke the idea that we get when we think of a mansion today.

Essentially Jesus is saying that there are many places for people to live in God's house, and Jesus is going to prepare places for them.

Sources: The BDAG (Offline Resource) for the Greek and Online Etymology Dictionary for the Latin.

I didn't find exactly what I said in the previous comment, but here's the definitions of δικαιόω which I did find:

> 1. To take up a legal cause, show justice, do justice, take up a cause
2. To render a favorable verdict, vindicate
3. to cause someone to be released from personal or institutional claims that are no longer to be considered pretinent or valid, make free/pure
4. to demonstrate to be morally right, prove to be right

I think 3 and 4 are closest to what I was saying, but neither say exactly that.

Source, p249

This is generally considered the best NT lexicon: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Greek-English-Lexicon-Testament-Christian-Literature/dp/0226039331&ved=2ahUKEwjg-rnhk5TkAhUQIKwKHWL4BioQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw2x1bV7P6oLho-Lu3Dn94Uv

It's pretty extensive. There is a shorter edition too if you're mostly wanting glosses, but if you're wanting to really dig in BDAG is the way to go.

I have seen people using the Brill dictionary lately too, but it's not specifically NT.

The grammar from what I can tell is really close but tends to be simpler in Koine so you probably wouldn't need a specifically NT grammar. Wallace's grammar would help with specific passages and constructions if you want one and his book is relatively inexpensive.

Well there's the Wikipedia of course. It uses several different (though some conflicting) sources.

But the one that I get the definition and the particular count from is actually Bauer's Lexicon that had its 3rd edition published in 2001. It's considered one of the bigger of the big boys when it comes to understanding the old terms.

Oh! The word I reference is "porneia" in Greek.

Edit: You can also use an Interlinear translation to count off the number of uses. Though that would take a lot of reading.

I think it depends on the discipline (Thayer's NT specific, so less so in mine). Older LSJs have also hit public domain, hence Perseus having them. I'm sure one of our seminarians could do better on this, but it looks like a recent NT Lexicon is Bauer's. Looks pricey though, for non-professional use.