Fightin’ Words
I’ve been fascinated by language for a long time, at least since buying an NIV Keyword Study Bible in 2006. Catching a glimpse of the original intent and meaning of God’s Word was nothing less than captivating. But the more I learned, the more I realized I had yet to learn.
For example, I always assumed the oldest Biblical text is in Hebrew, but it’s a Greek manuscript called the Septuagint. Legend holds that in the third century B.C.E., seventy-two Israelite scribes, working remotely, each translated a now-lost Hebrew original into seventy identical Koine Greek texts. The oldest Hebrew fragments of the Masoretic Text, on the other hand, hail from the 9th century CE, over a millennia later. And don’t even get me started on Aramaic, the language that most Jews had been speaking since the Babylonian Exile.
Don’t get me wrong, English is great! But if you want to understand what the Bible says about military service, you need to supplement your reading… Click the images to go to their ☧ost.
