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patrick457
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A rather interesting blog post by Ben Witherington. Thoughts?
While many Christians know that the English word ‘taxi’ comes from the Greek word for ‘quick’, what is decidedly less well know is that the mistranslation of the prepositional phrase ‘en taxei’ has led to all sorts of wrong conclusions about the eschatology of the NT. While en taxei can in some contexts mean ‘soon’ telling when something will happen, in Lk. 18.8 and in various other places in the NT it likely has the adverbial sense of ‘quickly’ telling ‘how’ something will happen. (cf. Acts 12.7; 22.18; 25.4; Rom. 16.20; 1 Tim. 3.14; Rev. 1.1; 22.6). There is furthermore precedent in the LXX for the phrase meaning quickly or suddenly—Josh. 8.18-19; Psalm 2.12; Ezek. 29.5 and see Sir. 27.3. How is this a game-changer in terms of interpreting key eschatological texts in the NT? Let’s take a few examples.
patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2015/01/25/en-taxei-quickly-or-soon/
While many Christians know that the English word ‘taxi’ comes from the Greek word for ‘quick’, what is decidedly less well know is that the mistranslation of the prepositional phrase ‘en taxei’ has led to all sorts of wrong conclusions about the eschatology of the NT. While en taxei can in some contexts mean ‘soon’ telling when something will happen, in Lk. 18.8 and in various other places in the NT it likely has the adverbial sense of ‘quickly’ telling ‘how’ something will happen. (cf. Acts 12.7; 22.18; 25.4; Rom. 16.20; 1 Tim. 3.14; Rev. 1.1; 22.6). There is furthermore precedent in the LXX for the phrase meaning quickly or suddenly—Josh. 8.18-19; Psalm 2.12; Ezek. 29.5 and see Sir. 27.3. How is this a game-changer in terms of interpreting key eschatological texts in the NT? Let’s take a few examples.
patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2015/01/25/en-taxei-quickly-or-soon/