If I may jump down from the peanut gallery and butt in here, I don't think that was cuban leaf's intent at all. I think (correct me if I'm wrong, cuban leaf) he was just noting that a comma can switch the meaning of that passage back and forth like a toggle.
And there are no commas, nor any punctuation in Aramaic, Hebrew or Koine Greek.
Which makes me wonder, is there something in Greek grammar, the form of the verb, the word order or whatever, which would determine either the one meaning or the other?
Thank you! Yes, that is what I was saying, generally speaking.
I’ve been a Christian since 1981, but in the last five years I’ve switched some of my own thinking regarding the bible, as the internet makes it so ridiculously easy to study. For starters, and this is a big one. I no longer consider any English language bible to be “the” word of God. I now say that I believe it “contains” the word of God.
We are looking at 66 books, by many different authors and written over many hundreds of years, and in languages other than English. Add to that what kinds of “book” we are actually reading, as well as what information they actually contain, and one is hard pressed to make the case that every word in our english bibles, and ONLY those words, are “the” word of God. I What about the reference I made to the book of Wisdom and 1 Enoch as they are quoted in the new testament, yet not part of canon. But they ARE part of canon in some Christian denominations (e.g. ethiopian orthodox).
The bible is not God. It is the words of men inspired by God, and sometimes they quote him in both the old and new testaments. The most obvious being anything in red. But much of it is simply the words of men. Heck, even Paul says that what he is saying in one place is from him, not God. I worship God, my creator, but I don’t worship the bible. The bible is written by men, compiled by men, and translated/interpreted by men. Men of God, no doubt, but men, nonetheless.
And that last part speaks to why I question why I read an OT based on the Masoretic text rather than the Septuagint, the latter being what the writers of the NT quoted verbatim.
There is so much we don’t know about how our bibles were actually compiled/translated/interpreted, and so much information is now available. And the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls helped. But it is the internet and search engines that really ramped the whole thing up. Some of my beliefs are being turned on their ear. No, not the gospel message. But some of the stuff “argued” for generations is being clarified, and fast.
This is a good thing. Christianity is not being damaged or destroyed. It is being purified. Just as the invention of the printing press gave us the reformation, the internet is giving us an opportunity to home in on the message of Christ and get rid of the man made fluff and dogmatism.