Better Bibles Blog

Two terms that are somewhat related occur frequently throughout the New Testament. The first term is kingdom, which is usually perceived as a government in which the king imposes his will on a nation, allowing the people little or no choice in determining the course of their lives. This perception doesn’t fit the kingdom of [...]

One of the most frequent Greek grammatical constructions in the New Testament (occurring thousands of times) is what grammarians call the “genitive construction.” English translations often reflect this with the preposition of as in the love of God. In Intermediate New Testament Greek, Richard Young lists 20 different meanings that the genitive construction can convey, [...]

In Figures of Speech Used in the Bible (1,100 pp.), E.W. Bullinger catalogued over 200 distinct figures of speech, several of them with 30-40 varieties. Bullinger defines a figure as a word or sentence thrown into a peculiar form, different from its original or simplest meaning or use. Acts 11:22 contains the figure of speech [...]

There are many instances in which every word of the Greek New Testament does not need to occur in English to convey the meaning accurately, clearly, and naturally. In an article entitled Being Less than Explicit in Notes on Translation (published by the Summer Institute of Linguistics), Ballard and Palleson state that the meaning is [...]

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he used about 100 rhetorical questions. Unlike real questions whose purpose is to obtain information, the purpose of rhetorical questions is to convey information. According to Dr. Paul Ellingworth in The Bible Translator (published by the United Bible Societies), a positive rhetorical question is usually equivalent to a [...]