Quote:
Originally Posted by lagtight
A surprisingly scholarly King James Onlyist named Will Kinney has a website that goes into excruciating detail about different Bible translations, textual variants, etc.
http://www.brandplucked.webs.com
Having a website doesn't make one "scholarly." I don't see a lot of external verification of who he is. And while he quotes a lot of things, that also doesn't make him the work "scholarly." But setting those concerns aside:
https://brandplucked.webs.com/mt2324strainatgnat.htm
Quote:
Dan Wallace is probably the best known King James Bible critic out there today. In one of his articles he comes out with this outright lie, saying: "Another well-known error is found in Jesus’ discourse against the religious leaders of his day, recorded in Matthew 23. In v. 24 the KJV reads, “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” The Greek verb διυλίζω means “to strain out.” I believe that the KJV of 1611 actually had this wording, but inexplicably changed it later to “strain at.”
I found the original quote from a 2004 article:
https://bible.org/article/changes-kjv-1611-illustration
Quote:
Another well-known error is found in Jesus’ discourse against the religious leaders of his day, recorded in Matthew 23. In v. 24 the KJV reads, “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” The Greek verb διυλίζω means “to strain out.” I believe that the KJV of 1611 actually had this wording, but inexplicably changed it later to “strain at.” Some scholars argue that “strain at” is simply an archaic rendering of “strain out.” But, even if this is the case, few in the KJV camp today would interpret this phrase as “strain out.”7 Here is a place in which the KJV needs to be updated so that people can understand what is meant. After all, if inspiration implies preservation, and preservation implies accessibility, accessibility of meaning is just as important as accessibility of words. (It is in fact for the reason of accessibility that the Bible must be translated afresh every fifty years or so.)
Footnote 7: 7 Oxford English Dictionary.s.v. “strain [verb],” 21: “It has been asserted that ‘straine at’ in the Bible of 1611 is a misprint for ‘straine out’, the rendering of earlier versions ... But quots. 1583 and 1594 show that the translators of 1611 simply adopted a rendering that had already obtained currency.” Although this may be true, the OED adds quickly that “The phrase, however, was early misapprehended (perh. already by Shaks. in quot. 1609), the verb being supposed to mean ‘to make violent effort.’”
So he's making the observation based on a footnote in the Oxford English Dictionary. That's not an unreliable source of information, and it's difficult to call him a liar for making that reference, and the fact that the OED points to the interpretation of the meaning of 'straine at' to be something other than the usual sense that we would take of 'straining out' something from something else doesn't cohere.
Second, his observation is being made in reference to a 1611-only argument (see the article). And his point is that the language changes and needs to be updated, so that it can be understandable to the present audience. So the wrong-ness of it has much more to do with the language.
As to the rest of the article by Will Kinney, I find very little convincing about the scholarship of the Greek language. Once the text is written in a certain way, I do not find it convincing that it's correct simply because others followed suit. For example:
Quote:
The Baptist commentator, John Gill, writes concerning this verse: "To this practice Christ alluded here; and so very strict and careful were they in this matter, that to strain AT (caps mine) a gnat, and swallow a camel, became at length a proverb, to signify much solicitude about little things, and none about greater. These men would not, on any consideration, be guilty of such a crime, as not to pay the tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, and such like herbs and seeds; and yet made no conscience of doing justice, and showing mercy to men, or of exercising faith in God, or love to him. Just as many hypocrites, like them, make a great stir, and would appear very conscientious and scrupulous, about some little trifling things, and yet stick not, at other times, to commit the grossest enormities, and most scandalous sins in life.
Matthew Henry also comments: "they strained AT a gnat, and swallowed a camel. In their doctrine they strained AT gnats, warned people against every the least violation of the tradition of the elders. In their practice they strained AT gnats, heaved AT them, with a seeming dread, as if they had a great abhorrence of sin, and were afraid of it in the least instance"
These two commentators do not try to change the reading found in the King James Bible. They affirm that the Pharisees had a great outward revulsion for minor sins, yet they swallowed a camel. How many gnats do you suppose were on that camel they swallowed?
Of course they didn't change the rendering of it. They were simply quoting what was there. Perhaps more modern style would be to put a [sic] in that spot if the language doesn't really make sense. And the rhetorical question at the end doesn't actually say anything.
The citations of previous speakers/writers using the phrase doesn't speak to scholarship. It speaks more to tradition. In fact, none of the argument that is made reflects a scholarly attempt to understand the Greek word. It's simply saying that this is what people were saying at the time. Which may even be true.
That doesn't speak to whether it's accurate. I would point to this in much the same way that contemporary scholarship points to the "unequally yoked" verse as most certainly not actually being a statement about marriage, yet people push it forward with that context all the time.
So the fundamental question: Was the interpretation of "strain[e] at" during the time of the 1611 writings as accurate as possible to the Greek? The answer seems to be not. The apparent use of that phrasing in the OED points to a different meaning ("to make violent effort") and not the idea of "strain[e] out" as in removing from by way of a sieve or screen (or something like that).
That it wasn't so wrong as to completely mislead to wrong interpretations is another matter entirely. We can attempt to interpret the passage as Jesus saying that people are making violent efforts to get the gnat, and that they're missing the camel. By thinking of it this way, we are unlikely to get the interpretation of it to be dramatically different than what's in the text. But that's not what the text actually says.
