When you put it all together and shake it up

Bill Mounce:

When you put it altogether and shake it up, the ESV felt (in line with its translation procedures) that “letter” was too difficult in v 27 and went with “written code.”

If you have even a teensy bit of understanding of New Testament Greek, Bill Mounce is going to help you with his weekly posts on Koinonia. Here's the latest.

You can work out whether his argument succeeds, but it helps understand why, time and again, the ESV footnotes make the ESV a translation worth preaching on.

Greek Geeks: A moros is not a moron

Pronounced "mow-ross".

Bill Mounce explains why a moros is not a moron. He also gives a great rant on why, if you keep going on about Greek when you preach, you may well be a moros.

If you are a kind of average guy who struggles to keep your head above the Greek water, this is a great blog to follow.

Con Campbell and Greek stuff

Con Campbell says that "Perfective aspect is like a reporter who describes a street parade from a helicopter."

Useful!

He applies his understanding to this verse.

"For while we were still weak, Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6)

Some commentators write that because an aorist is used here, Romans 5:6 proves that Christ’s death was a once-off event, never to be repeated, and therefore Christ could not be reoffered time and time again in the Roman mass. While not wanting to deny the once-for-all nature of Christ’s death (cf. 1 Peter 3:18), the aorist in Romans 5:6 does not prove the point at all. If we look ahead a few verses, we come to 5:14 (see above), where we see an aorist that plainly depicts death reigning from the time of Adam to Moses. To reiterate, this is not a once-off action. It is not punctiliar.

So all you Hellenophiles of the koine variety, head on over to this blog and be helped further.