Conservative Friends Bible Study of The Gospel of John #2

John 1:1-5

Henry begins a verse-by-verse commentary on the Greek of the Gospel of John, pointing out significant Greek meanings as he moves from verse to verse.   

Verse 1

The Greek word “pros” (often translated “with”, as in John 1:1-2) and is often translated as “. . .  and the word was with God.” However, this Greek word “pros” means “to”, “by” (as in location), or “before” (as in the vicinity or presence of God”). As a result, it might be more correctly translated as, “In the beginning was this word, and the word was by (in the presence of) God, and God was the word.”

Verse 2

In the Greek of Jesus’ time, the use of the male noun classes usually included both male and female, unless the context of the noun demanded it be interpreted as referring only to males. Henry warns that it is important not to apply our popularly-held 21st century predilection of insisting that the male noun class always excludes women. For the Greeks, they were usually inclusive and included both men and women. 

Verse 3

In the phrase, “In him was life . . . .” the Greek word for life is “zoe”, and (especially in John’s Gospel) is better understood as “eternal life”/”kingdom of God”/”kingdom of heaven”.  

Verses 4-5

The phrase “. . . the light of men” is a very good example that in the Greek mind, “anthropon” (“men”) was clearly understood as inclusively including both men and women.

The Greek word “scotia” (translated “darkness”) in the phrase, “. . . the darkness has not understood it” would be more accurately translated as “ignorance”. In addition, the Greek word, “katalaben” often translated as “understood” would more correctly be translated as. ”overcome”/”fiercely grasped”/”taken it down” as a more accurate meaning. Thus giving a rendering of “ . . . ignorance has not overcome it [the light]/taken it [the light] down”.

  The advice in our introduction is from page 32 of the Ohio Yearly Meeting's Book of Discipline.

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Transcript

Host 0:01

Advice fourteen Live in love as Christian brethren, ready to be helpful to one another. Rejoice together in the blessings of life, sympathize with each other in its trials, know one another as fellow workers in the things that endure, watch over one another for good, praying that each may be a living member of the Church of Christ and may grow in the knowledge of the love of God. From O'Hara Yearly Meetings, Book of Discipline.

Henry Jason 0:33

This is the OYM Greek Bible study. This is session number two on our study of the gospel according to John. We began and ended last week with chapter one, verse one. I hope we finished verse one today.

SPEAKER_05 0:49

Henry, I I would like to read uh verse one from JB Phillips. Okay. At the beginning, God expressed himself. That personal expression, that word was with God and was God, and he existed with God from the beginning. But okay. Slightly different. I think that answers some of the questions that we had in our discussion last week.

Henry Jason 1:24

Actually, I did say last week that the word logos, that in most translations gets translated as word, but doesn't usually mean a single word, does have that general meaning of anything that is verbally expressed, anything that is verbally uttered. So it can mean a single word, but actually it much more often means something much broader, bigger than that, like a whole speech that one gives, a talk. It can be actually just or a paragraph or a sentence or as a short expression. So it has all those meanings on the uh outward side. Then inwardly, abstractly, it means rationality or reason or something like take into an account, an account, that sort of meaning. It goes both directions. And actually, in this prologue that we're reading here, these first 18 verses, you actually get both sides of that meaning. And we'll see that very shortly. So I'm not sure about that personal, what that would mean as to what Phillips was why he put that in there, but expression's okay. Because when God expresses Himself, things come into existence, things happen. There's something else going on other than just God.

SPEAKER_05 2:44

That's my impression of what he meant by personal.

Henry Jason 2:49

Okay. This second part in the word, in my translation, in the word was with God. Well, that word with is not actually what the Greek word normally means. Does anyone have a different translation than was with God?

SPEAKER_03 3:06

I have a couple of variants. The uh New English Bible says the word dwelt with God and what God was, the word was. It's showing an equivalency there. From the today's English version, he was with God and he was the same as God.

Henry Jason 3:27

Okay, but both those translations are using with God. Does anyone have something different than with God? The Greek word is pros, P-R-O-S, and it means to T O or also in the sense of before, like standing in front of a mirror before God or in the vicinity of God. That sort of sense. We don't have a preposition like that in English, so it's uh by God BY, by God, that kind of sense, although it's not meant physically, of course. I'm just saying that because uh that is not the usual word that would be translated as with. The last part of that first verse is and the word was God, and the word, I mean, and the word was God. I would translate that a bit differently, I would go the other way around. And God was the word. So you have in the beginning was this word, and the word was by God, and God was the word. I don't know of any translation that does that, although I have read translations where you could possibly translate it as, and the word was divine. But if you take the word order of the Greek here, again, my Greek isn't that good, but I would also possibly say, and God was the word. What the word was, God was, as I think David just said. I'm trying to get you all to maybe think of some of these expressions here in a little different way than what you might have in your more standard translations. We're actually going to be spending probably a lot of time on this first the first 18 verses here, but I think it's important because everything here in the first 18 verses will be coming up throughout the whole gospel. The word was divine, this what God utters, how God expresses himself, what he expresses as an expressing kind of divine entity is also divine.

SPEAKER_11 5:34

It feels to me like a very poetic recapitulation of the basis of Genesis.

Henry Jason 5:42

There is definitely, I think, the sense of Genesis here in terms of how it starts off with the words in the beginning, in beginning, actually. And that that clearly is true. As poetic, many scholars think that a lot of the verses here come from an original hymn interspersed with a few other sentences, so that there is this kind of poetic feel to it or a sing-song kind of feel to it. So that also might affect how the words are ordered to fit whatever hymn the tune was that it was being sung to. You just have to kind of keep that in the back of your mind. I've not read that anywhere, but that's my own kind of thought about how languages work. If you even, you know, you make a song today, create a song, uh, you might use one word over another word because you need a four-syllable word rather than a two-syllable word. So don't get too rigid in saying, well, this has to be the word that is meant here and whatever. I think Pat also wanted to say something.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Yeah, I did. I just think that the structure of that lends itself to the word order that is there. Um, in the beginning was the word, so the focus is on word, and then the next uh phrase goes, and the word was with God. So he's talking about word and defining it, and then that third part of the verse keeps that same structure. He's defining word, and it's more poetic, it's more coherent to keep the focus on word, defining that rather than reversing it and saying God was word, the word.

Henry Jason 7:30

Let me interrupt you there. I am agreeing with you. The word is the focus, but that's why I was saying maybe the word order is a bit different here for other reasons that we don't know. And actually, the word God there, literally, the last few words is and God was the word, is how it says in Greek.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Okay, I was just going to say that the second verse then uh suggests that reciprocality of reversing the word order.

Henry Jason 8:00

Okay, if I give you literally what it says here in the Greek, literally, in beginning was the word, and the word was by the God, and God was the word. I'm understanding what I've read that when you have God without an article, as you would normally say in Greek, the God, meaning God in English, because it's an abstract noun, you'd say the God, because that's how you do it in many languages of Europe: French, Spanish, Italian, abstract nouns will take an article the. But when it's without it, then it's kind of a predicative kind of meaning, meaning it's defining the word, like the word was X, the word was divine, so that what God is, the word is. Am I getting too formal here?

SPEAKER_02 8:51

Yeah, I'm not following it with what you're saying, but I I do see that there's a kind of reciprocality between those two, word and God, and I think that that's picked up in the second verse.

Henry Jason 9:03

Yeah, let's go there, I think. Is there anything else before we go into the second verse that anyone has a comment or question?

SPEAKER_03 9:09

Or I did have a grammatical inquiry. I had noted that in the first instance of God it's hostheos, and then after that it leaves off the home. What's the significance of it?

Henry Jason 9:23

And you're saying God was the word, or the word was God. The word was perhaps divine, might be a simpler way of saying it in English. Just like God is divine, the word was divine. We have to say in Greek that Greek word order is very fluent, very loose. Because of Greek grammar, the word order is nothing like English being so strict that you have to say it in a certain way, otherwise, it's meaningless. Because of all the endings on Greek words, you can figure out what the meaning is from the endings, not the word order necessarily, although word order can mean something in terms of emphasis. If you look at all the different Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, you find a lot of variations in word order. Which was the original order of the words? Well, that's a problem scholars try to figure out, but it's not a major thing, it is something to be aware of.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

Henry, I wanted to note that goodspeed makes that choice of using the word divine. Oh. The word was with God, and the word was divine, is how he renders it. So he's agreeing with you.

Henry Jason 10:32

We're saying the same thing, saying the word was God, the word was divine, but it might be just a bit better in terms of being closer to how it would have sounded in Greek, rather than just literally strictly translating it as God. Divinity is divinity. Let me read the whole thing through five, starting with two. In my new revised standard version, he was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. The second verse here literally says, This was in beginning by God, with God. Okay? That is, this Lagos, this word was in the beginning, in God's presence by God. I think that's just again restating what was just said in that first verse. What translations do you have rather than this one was in the beginning?

SPEAKER_02 11:43

The same was in the beginning with God.

Henry Jason 11:46

The same, all right. That's King James Version.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

I have he was present originally.

Henry Jason 11:53

He, okay, you have he there. Anything else?

SPEAKER_03 11:57

From the very beginning, the word was with God. Today's English version.

Henry Jason 12:02

All right, so we have a he and we have the same.

SPEAKER_10 12:06

He was with God in the beginning.

Henry Jason 12:09

Okay, so we have a he, the same, and we have the word repeated. I want to bring up an important point here. Let me go to share green. And if I gave you the Geneva Bible, it says it was. I want to talk just a little bit because this will come up again and again throughout this gospel as well as in all of the New Testament, and that is something called gender. There's something called natural gender, and that's what we know of as gender and nature, male or female, right? And then there's also gender that is grammatical, grammatical gender. These two are two separate things. Modern English does not have grammatical gender. We do have natural gender. When I say he, you know specifically I'm talking about something that is male, masculine. When I say she, you know specifically I'm talking about something that is female, feminine. In a language like ancient Greek, modern Greek, they have three grammatical genders. The traditional names are masculine, feminine, and neuter. Those three grammatical genders are not the same as talking about natural gender. What linguists use instead of saying grammatical gender, so that you do not confuse natural gender with grammatical gender, they talk about noun classes. And we would say Greek has three noun classes. French has two, two noun classes, what we traditionally call masculine and feminine. You get a language like Swahili, and I believe there are six grammatical genders. The thing is that what's important to know about grammatical genders in terms of Greek, we linguists would always talk about noun classes, not to confuse the two. Because if a noun is in a specific class, that means the modifiers, the words that describe that noun, the adjectives or whatever, have to have the same kind of endings that that particular noun and that noun class has. So in Greek, you have a word like technon, which means child. Technon is a grammatical gender neuter, whereas a word like gune, the word for a woman, that is in a noun class that is traditionally called feminine. Even in German, a word like dasmächen girl is a neuter noun, grammatically neuter. But obviously the gender is not neuter, she's feminine. And so often people can completely confuse these things. That's why linguists do not like to use the term uh gender when they refer to grammatical gender. They'll talk about noun classes because you get these things so confused. The reason why in languages like Latin and Greek and Italian and Spanish, we have feminine and masculine grammatical genders is because when a noun refers to a person who is either male or female, they must fall into that particular class that's called masculine or feminine. But in reality, all nouns in the language will fall into one of those two classes in those languages, Spanish and Italian and French. But in English, we're forced to only pay attention to whether it's male or female in a natural nature kind of sense. I'm saying that because in this verse that we're looking at, I would translate, as does the old Geneva Bible, instead of saying he, I would translate it as it because it refers to the logos, that word. And for the next few verses, until we get down to verse 11 or so, it should be translated as it. But then when we get to verse 11, that is when it should be thought of as proceeding into a he because it's referring to the word that was in Jesus, the word that was incarnated in Jesus.

SPEAKER_03 16:23

That word kotos, is it clearly neuter?

Henry Jason 16:27

It's grammatically masculine, but if it were referring to another noun that's also grammatically masculine, we would translate it as it. But if it were a human being masculine, we would translate it as he. So to be strictly clear here, I would translate it as it. We could translate it both as it and he. In the Greek mind at the moment, he's thinking both of those, all right? It's it and a he. But then when you get down to verse 11, the word became flesh and he dwelt among us. Then you're talking about, you're emphasizing the he, then at that point, the masculine, the human element. In the world's languages, more often they don't have this kind of division. There's usually a division between animate and inanimate things, things that move and things that are alive versus things that are not moving or not alive. That's a much more frequent kind of grammatical gender you find in the world's languages as a whole. But since we all are more familiar with the European languages, we are so brainwashed to think in terms of natural gender when you have to be careful, especially when we're talking religious language here. Then okay, that's a different story. Can we hold off on that? Because there's a lot more to say about this here as we go on. That has aspects to do with the culture as such, because clearly, as well as inanimate and animate aspects of God, God isn't either, of course. God is beyond these human categories of masculine, feminine, or uh inanimate, animate. We're always kind of forced to make a choice in using human language to talk about divine things. And given whatever your language is, you do need to make choices as to how to approach that. And traditionally, since Jesus called God the living source of everything, Father, in his culture, obviously, we know that in the Jewish family, the father, as well as in Roman and Greek families too, the father was the power in the whole family system. So I can't imagine him using any other word than father, as to it being understood as you know, we're talking about the source, the maintainer, the sustainer of everything. Let's get on, though, back to the second verse. So this one is how it gets translated in my translation here. This one, the transliteration here, this one was in the beginning with God or by God, near God, in his presence, and also was divine. We're kind of separating different facets of God here. Is there anything else in verse two?

SPEAKER_06 19:17

So, Henry, the people who would have heard this or read this, you're saying that whether it be the term he or it, they would be receiving it as a reference to a non-gendered being?

Henry Jason 19:32

It would only be referring back to the logos in green. And so it's sort of like in suspension at this moment as to whether it's a he or she, but you do need to be grammatically correct and use the right ending because of the class that it's grammatically in. But let's keep the grammatical clearly separate from the natural gender. That's the point I want to make here. And of course, nobody here is Chinese. Has no difference in natural gender pronouns. He, she, and it. There's only one pronoun for that, ta, and you know, so that they don't have the problem we're having here in English. Okay? It means he, she, it, and a they. It's also plural. So it's this kind of problem we have because of English, modern English. I don't know what gender the word word was in old English. It's very interesting because one of the words for woman in old English was actually a grammatically neuter noun, and it had to have neuter descriptive adjectives with it. One was neuter, and another word was also masculine. Of course, clearly the woman was female, but just because of the nature of the language and where these particular words fell into a system of noun classes, she would be referred to as either an he or an it. There's a wonderful old linguistics thing I should mention. You've probably heard this, but let me ask you: what do you call a person who speaks three languages trilingual? What do you call a person who speaks two languages bilingual? What do you call a person who speaks one language an American? If you're in Europe, you often know two or three languages just because you can't go very far without hitting someone else whose native language is different from your own.

SPEAKER_04 21:32

Many African countries have that. I knew a Kenyan friend, and I think he knew five languages.

Henry Jason 21:46

He spoke Polish and Lithuanian. And when he went to school at that time as a child, this would be back in the 1890s, he was taught in Russian. So he spoke Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian when he came to this country. And what was the language he learned when he came to the United States? Italian, because he worked with Italians and then English. So he's got five languages there.

SPEAKER_08 22:13

My son speaks seven languages. One is also sign language, so he doesn't get it from me. I'm hopeless.

Henry Jason 22:23

In a sense, because English has become the world international language, which ancient Greek was in the Mediterranean world in the Mideast, very similar. Everybody learned Greek. Here we got all these writings by these Jewish Christians, and they're all in Greek because Greek was the international language of that time. You've got Greek inscriptions in graffiti in places like Rome, Italy, as well as in Lyon, France, it was the international language of the area at that time. So it was all over and through the Mideast. Very similar situation. Okay, in verse 3, the New Revised Standard Version here says, All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being. All things through him came into being, all things through it, through the word, and then came into being. Well, this verb is just came to be, came to exist. And without it, not one thing, not one thing understood, came to be, came to happen, came to exist. So again, this aspect of God that's called the Word or the utterance of God just covers everything that is not God. What's interesting though, and this is another point I want to bring up, we're just going to talk a lot about language here today, I think. As I mentioned last time, Greek had no punctuation. So you never knew where one sentence ended or another one began. And this is one of these cases where different modern people translate it differently depending on what they do with the last few words here in this sentence, which is without him not one thing came into being, which came into being. Well, that which came into being, the earliest writers on these verses put that with the next verse. Because remember, Greek did not have chapters or verse numbers until hundreds of years later, late Middle Ages. So that what they did was they said that which came into being would be with the next sentence of verse four, rather than without him came to be not one thing. I hope I'm not losing people. This is getting kind of convoluted here. You have different translations, and you'll see if you were to compare translations that some people put what came into being with the end of the sentence in verse three. Whereas the earliest Greeks, when they were talking about these verses, put it with the beginning of verse four. Later Greek Christian writers again put it with what was at the end of the third verse, because the Gnostics preferred to have it at the beginning of the next sentence. And so you see, there's the all these issues that were going on. This makes it very complex trying to figure out what these are. I'm going with the earlier understanding of it and putting it with the next verse. So what came into being in it, in him, in it was life.

SPEAKER_08 25:35

Henry, I have the New Jerusalem Bible here. May I read you what it says?

Henry Jason 25:41

Yeah, please.

SPEAKER_08 25:42

Through him all things came to be. Not one thing had its being, but through him, all that came to be had life in him, and that life was the light of men.

Henry Jason 25:55

All things that came to be.

SPEAKER_08 25:57

Through him, all things came to be.

Henry Jason 26:00

Yeah, that's how I would translate it. That which came into being, that meaning anything, that which came into being in it, in the word, was life.

SPEAKER_08 26:12

All that came to be had life in him.

Henry Jason 26:15

And that life is Zoe, which is eternal life. And if you understand what we were saying earlier, eternal life is life, is the kingdom of God, is the kingdom of heaven, is the kingdom of Christ, is the kingdom of the Lord. It's that state. We're talking about looking at this Godhead as a more even abstract kind of noun, Godhead, in a different way, but we're talking about the same thing: God, word, life, eternal life. That this eternal life was in this word, this utterance of God. Some of this may be very confusing at the moment. I hope as we go on and keep on talking about it, it'll become clearer. If you go on with the rest of verse 4, and the life was the light of men. So this eternal life was the light, the illumination of men. Okay, here's another thing. Let's go back to share screen. Now, this is the Greek word for man, human being. I'm saying man because in the last thousand years, man had a general understanding of all human beings. Man was a human being. It later in the history of English began to also have that more specific meaning of a man a masculine person, but originally it was this more general human being kind of meaning. An air. This is the word for man, a masculine person, also means husband. Again, with English, a word like man had an inclusive meaning in the history of English that included male and female. That was traditionally the case in English up through the 20th century, when you began to have people wanting it to only have an exclusive meaning, meaning male as a just male, not inclusive as it was originally. Okay, Jack, what you were gonna say something?

SPEAKER_06 28:17

I was gonna suggest another word for anthropost as being humanity.

Henry Jason 28:23

I wanted to say something here. This word manhood, everybody knows what that means in modern English. Well, earlier it meant humanity. If you read Quaker writings of the 1600s, it meant humanity. Again, man in this more inclusive sense.

SPEAKER_06 28:41

Yeah, that's what I was gonna suggest for anthropos.

Henry Jason 28:44

But today is humanity. Man, yes. Okay, let's go further. This word is a Hebrew word, and you know it from Genesis, and what does it mean in Hebrew? Man and mankind has both meanings.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Henry, I have two translations that actually render that with the word mankind. Okay, let's hear it. Good speed and today's English version. I appreciate that um humanity is a little less gendered in English.

Henry Jason 29:19

Yeah, well, what I'm saying is that if you're reading the King James Version Bible, or if you're reading any older English works, you need to keep in mind that these words had inclusive meanings, that what was usually looked at as masculine in 21st century English thought was inclusive of female as well. Point I'm trying to make here. Okay, let's go on. So in this word is the light, in the light of men, the illuminator for men, for human beings, because this is the plural here for human beings, for men, was in this eternal life, and this eternal life was this word, this aspect of God. But we're getting closer to getting into the real physical world here as we go along through these verses. And then in verse 5, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Light shines in darkness, illumination shines in darkness. Darkness is often the thought in Greek is often ignorance. We're not just necessarily talking about physical darkness, but spiritual darkness or intellectual darkness, ignorance. And darkness did not overcome it, did not grasp it, did not take it down. Illumination is greater than darkness, and this is the light, the light of Christ, as we will eventually talk about it. Okay, any questions, comments?

SPEAKER_06 30:55

Henry, um, an intellectually oriented Greek person would find this strange. Repeat that an intellectually oriented Greek person would find this whole passage strange. I mean, this is being written for Jewish Christians, but Greeks were from a pagan culture, right? Multiple gods.

Henry Jason 31:15

Yes, but there are a lot of commentators who referred to these verses as being something that sounds very much the kind of thought that you would find in the Stoic philosophies of ancient Greece, that there seemed to be something very similar in terms of how early Christians were beginning to understand the nature of Jesus and the nature of God. And in contact with that particular philosophy of Stoics, the Stoicism of the first century, they saw a lot of familiar kinds of thought. So that's what I think you could say you're seeing here. There's a similarity there in the language. There were many other philosophies, of course, of Greek going on at this time, too. We're talking three, four hundred years after the classical period. You might want to say, if you wanted to, to say that Christians were borrowing some of the thought patterns of the Stoics and trying to explain this to a Greek-speaking culture of what Jesus was, who Jesus was, what God is, what God was.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

Henry, this is uh David again. I read a number of discussions around this word catalambano. A good variety there, but I'm glad that several of the translations in front of me say the darkness has put it out or extinguished it. I find it less helpful are the ones that say the darkness has not understood it or comprehended it. And I just think it's not an intellectual thing. It's no, it hasn't wiped it out. I think it's misleading.

Henry Jason 32:54

The Greek word literally, if you just look at the prefix and the root, means take down. It has not taken it down. Darkness could not take it down. How do you understand that? That's why you get these variations in translation, because what did that mean? We don't always know what some of these Greek words mean. There's a good number of occasions when the word only occurs once in the New Testament or even in other Greek texts. These are called hapaks legomena, words that occur only once. And because we don't have enough Greek manuscripts of anything left with that word in it, we have to sometimes guess as to what the meaning is. Quite often the context will give you some indication of how to translate it. Here it's it's pretty clear that it the light is stronger than darkness in some way.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

We are not well served if we stick with the King James. Uh the darkness comprehended it not, or those that say understood it. I just don't think that's as strong as ain't nobody gonna put it out.

Henry Jason 33:58

Now you're bringing up another important point in reading the King James Version. The English of the 1700s is a different language than the English of the 21st century, and you need to really remember that. We have some understanding of that language, but many words have changed their meanings or had additional meanings that they no longer have in modern English. And our first inclination is to translate it the way we think that word, or what that word ordinarily means in modern English. That may be wrong. And I do know comprehend doesn't always have that sense of comprehend in the modern sense. I think it can also mean encompass, maybe overtake it kind of sense. The King James translation was a pretty good translation for its time, but English has changed. And if you are going to translate or understand the words in the King James Version in a modern sense, you're going to get it wrong sometimes.

SPEAKER_08 34:57

The translation that I have states a light that darkness could not overpower.

Henry Jason 35:03

Yeah, overpower, overtake, overcome, put out. As I said, literally, you have this prefix down and the root take, take down. Darkness cannot extinguish. I'm just remembering something that William Schoen wrote in a work on imaginations, imaginings, where he says there that the light of Christ within us is greater than that power of darkness in us. Just like what Fox was saying, there's an ocean of light over this ocean of darkness, evil. And it's that same kind of understanding, especially if you're a drug addict, then you're just overcome by your impulse to take drugs. You need to somehow get to that person and explain to them that it may seem that way, but there really is something even more powerful than that grasp that drugs have on you, or any any kind of addiction. And that's the kind of sense I think I see here in this particular verse, just because it's saying that God is more powerful than evil. You had religions where you had good gods and evil gods, and they're more or less equivalent, they're always fighting each other. But what's being said here is God as light is more powerful than darkness, evil, ignorance.

SPEAKER_10 36:26

I was also seeing it if you don't have that light, if you're in the darkness, you don't understand or comprehend what Jesus really is. And those who are in darkness don't yet comprehend it. I know that there's a lot more to all of it than we can grasp.

Henry Jason 36:46

The issue is this word has a lot of different meanings in Greek. That's our problem in deciding how was it understood by those people who first heard this. I'm just going to give you the four or five major categories of meanings for this word. One, to make something one's own, to win, attain. Two, to gain control of someone through pursuit, to catch up with, to seize, three, to come upon someone with implication of surprise, to catch. Four, to process information, understand, grasp. And then there are subdivisions under all of those meanings. So that meaning you're giving is is possible, but in context, I think John is talking about something more elemental here. Uh, Pat was going to say something.

SPEAKER_02 37:35

I was just wanting to uh put in a good word for the King James version, although this uh conversation went in a different direction, but I'd still like to say that the way that early friends read scriptures was reading it in the same spirit in which they were written. And I find that the King James elicits that uh spirit more readily than more contemporary language does. So I think what it may lose in the exact meaning of a particular word that has changed over the centuries is more than made up for by the kind of use of language that is in the King James. I just feel often I feel a deadness when I read a more contemporary version of the Bible that I seldom feel when I read the King James. There's just maybe it's the dignity and the majesty and the power of the language that seems more suitable to the spiritual. It just has a quality to it that I've not seen in any other version. So I think it's okay to miss a word or two because the spirit is providing that understanding, even if the particular word is not exact.

Henry Jason 38:53

I would agree with that. As I said, I think the King James Version was a very good translation for its time, even though today we have sometimes better Greek manuscripts than were known in the Western part of Europe at that time. They did their best. And of course, what we are trying to do with the help of the Holy Spirit is to understand what was the meaning that the writers of these Gospels and New Testament works, what were they trying to convey? What did they want the reader to understand? And in this particular case here, too, this wasn't a song, a hymn, probably. And we're going to take that into consideration, as I said earlier. So I don't want to get too stuck up on these kinds of things, but just keep that in the back of your heads. I didn't grow up on the King James Version, it's a new version to me as an adult.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

If I could just make one more analogy on that, if you were to take the measurements of an object and give them specific, exact measurements and color and describe. It in terms of technical information, that would not give you as good a sense as maybe a poet's looking at the object and giving you a sense of the feeling of it. You know, and so I think what we're going for is more of that inner sense that the poetry can give you rather than the specific information that perhaps a scientist would give you.

Henry Jason 40:24

It's time for us to stop, but I just wanted to say something. Uh, Pat reminded me of the use of language. You know, if we are scientists, we have to be very precise in our language that a word has a very specific meaning. A kilogram is a kilogram is a kilogram. Or if you're talking about particles and waves and whatever, there's a very specific understanding of all of these words, and you have to be that way, otherwise you can't have science. But then you get to prose, and prose is not so strict or rigid. You then go to poetry, which is even less so. There's something deeper in poetry than in prose, than in pure scientific language. Finally, you get to religious language, spiritual language, and this is where you really have to get beyond the physical, the outward, the meanings of words as you ordinarily think of them, but get to something deeper. I know we're running late now, so but I did just want to end on that. Any last comments on this? We can continue this next week.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

Henry, as I was thinking tonight, you know, as we study scripture and as we look at history, it sounds like we need to think carefully about the Greek language and how it was used. But also what I've heard tonight is even as we look at the King James Version and maybe as we look at other translations in more recent times, that we've seen several iterations or changes in terms of how English is used as well, too. So it uh sounds like it's quite challenging as we read any passage and seek to find meaning in the present moment.

Henry Jason 42:04

All of you monolingual English speakers, if you could look at some other translations in other languages that did not go through an English translation, but went back to an earlier language, like the Slavic languages, many of the Eastern Slavic through the Orthodox churches go directly to Greek. They never went through Latin because the Latin translation sometimes didn't get it right. And because they didn't get it right, Western European languages don't quite have it right sometimes. So you you just promulgate this problem. And there's more of this I can say. I probably should say this next week, too, because this is happening even today in the 20, 21st century, where the Bible is being translated into other languages by English speakers. I'm thinking of one case where I was told it was some southeastern language where someone told me that they learned that the word baptism that was translated into their language, I don't know if it was Thai or Lao, one of these languages like that, can only mean with water. Whereas baptism, baptize in Greek did not mean only water, it just meant immerge to immerse, excuse me, immerse something into something. And that's a very different thing. But if you're forcing it to mean with water in your translation into that language, then you're gonna have real problems, as you will have. But we have those problems with English too in other cases. Okay, we're way over time, so I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_09 43:30

Andrea, I had a comment. When I took Latin, that agricola was feminine. When you think of a farmer, you think of a male, but in Latin, agricoli was female.

Henry Jason 43:43

No, this is what I was pointing out earlier. Grammatically, agricola is a feminine noun. Grammatically, it's grammatical gender, which has is completely separate from natural gender. Pirata, the word for pirate in Latin, is a grammatically feminine noun, but there were no pirates have ever been females that I'm aware of. But this is the problem. I'm trying to get you guys to stretch your brains a little bit here because you're so brainwashed by this, and I mean that seriously. I've had these fights over and over again with people until suddenly some bulb turns on, and I'll tell them, go learn some Swahili, you know, and then you'll stretch. There's a language, uh what is it, Djibouti in northeastern Australia that has four genders, and in one gender it has words that refer to water, fire, danger, and women. That's one of those four genders. I really want to kind of shake up your understanding of male, female, masculine, feminine, genders, none classes classes. You'll get so much better understanding of your Bible when you can look at it from a different viewpoint. We could talk more about this next time. It is getting very late. Thanks, everybody. So see you somehow on Thursday, fifth day. Bye-bye.

Host 45:11

This podcast has been a production of Ohio Yearly Meeting. It was hosted by Henry Jason and edited by Kim Palmer. The introduction and credits were read by Chip Thomas. The quote in our introduction is from the Queries and Advices section of Ohio Yearly Meeting's Book of Discipline. A link to that book can be found in the show notes to this episode. We welcome feedback on this or any of our podcast episodes. Contact us through our website, Ohio Yearly Meeting.org, or email us at OIM Conservative at gmail.com.