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:::"casting lots" is the phrase used by NIV and Holman, the two most respected recent translations.  "Lots" is different from "dice", and given the distinction why not resolve it by using "gambled"?--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 22:14, 18 July 2009 (EDT)
 
:::"casting lots" is the phrase used by NIV and Holman, the two most respected recent translations.  "Lots" is different from "dice", and given the distinction why not resolve it by using "gambled"?--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 22:14, 18 July 2009 (EDT)
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== Love ==
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Hello all;
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While I'm hesitant about this project as a whole (in Burma, any vernacular Bible at all was pretty amazing - and I was lucky enough to have a teacher who taught me to read it in Greek), there's one thing which I think would be really helpful.
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That's the issue of 'love', or 'αγαπη'. It's a beautiful concept, and very famously explored by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13.
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If any word has a difficult to pin-down/changed meaning, I'd say it's this one - ever since people started translating Greek into English, four Greek words with very different meanings (storge, eros, philia, agape - as CS Lewis outlined) have been kludged together into the word 'love', which means that we miss a lot of the subtlety of passages like John 3:16, Matthew 22:37-41, 1 John 4:7-22, and the aforementioned 1 Corinthians 13.
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I don't exactly know how one would deal with this - if 'love' is too broad, then the KJV's 'charity' is too narrow (charity is more of an act, an expression of agape), and just romanising 'agape' into the text would run counter to its efforts towards clarity. My NRSV (yes, I know, problematic around Isaiah, but I still feel it points towards Jesus in prophecy - it's also got a very handy set of 'textual links') approaches this in what I think is a helpful way - it uses the normal word, then has a little explanation of the Greek and other authorities in the footnote. I think the NIV and many other Bibles do a similar thing.
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In this case, it would be -
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'For God so loved<sup>1</sup> the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.'
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<sup>1</sup>Greek - 'agape'.
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Thoughts? I realise that it adds a potential layer of complexity, and detracts from the flow of the text, but I feel it's a nice compromise between ease of understanding and scriptural subtlety - it's a good way of drawing attention to what Paul calls 'the most special way'. [[User:AungSein|AungSein]] 08:58, 22 November 2009 (EST)
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