Matthew 1:25 And knew [ginosko {ghin-oce'-ko} Jewish idiom for sexual intercourse between a man and a woman] her not till [heos {heh'-oce}; Until] she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
And he knew her not till she brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS. (Matthew 1:25, Douay-Rheims)
kai ouk eginosken auten eos ou eteken ton yion autes ton prototokon kai ekalesen to onoma autou iesoun
Sometimes "eos" means that the action (or in St. Joseph's case, inaction) before the moment it points to has ceased and sometimes it means that the action continued. We understand which is the case from context, and when we need to translate into English, which has a more finely defined words, we choose between "until", "till", "to" or "before". Both Douay and King James translate it as "till"; I am not suprised that mariophobic translations, that abounded in modern times and Harley is using, mistranslate it as "until". It is most similar to the English "till" which also does not have the strict "before, but not after" meaning. For example, if I say "I did not drink alcohol till the blood test" the likely context is that my blood work should be good, not that I went to the bar right after I went to the clinic. But if I say "I did not drink alcohol till I joined a fraternity in college" then the context is, most likely, that I drank once I joined because that is what fraternities are for, are they not? In Matthew 1 the context is that Christ's birth was miraculous, not the relations John and Mary had after the focus of Matthew's story shifted away. It is reasonable to assume that Mathew's focus was on the absence of marital act before the birth of Christ, not after, all the more so since the testimony of Joseph to that effect had to me made at the time of Christ's birth, but testimonies of one's sex life for reasons other than establishing paternity are not common. Matthew simply had no way of knowing what Joseph and Mary's intimate life was the rest of their days.
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SoothingDave:In other words, you're sticking with the Bible in plain English and refuse to examine what it means when it is "translated" into Greek?
Full Court: Matthew 1:25 And knew [ginosko {ghin-oce'-ko} Jewish idiom for sexual intercourse between a man and a woman] her not till [heos {heh'-oce}; Until] she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
So, your response to a person who takes you on a careful examination of the Greek word "eos" and provides examples of its usages in the Bible is to simply point out that this word is translated by the KJV as "till" and rest your case on the simplest sense of the word in English.
Are you proud of yourself? Do you think God is happy with you ignoring evidence presented to you about what His Word means in the original languages?
I ask again:
Is there any possiblity whatsoever, in your own understanding of your own understanding, that you could be mistaken? Or have you reached fallibility in this area based upon the plain English meaning of words?
Can your mind perceive the distinction between what you think a passage means and what the author of the passage actually meant to convey?
SD