Straining at or straining out gnats.

02:26 PM

Since there has been an objection to including the discussion of "strain at a gnat" on the thread about a different translational question, http://av1611.com/forums/showthread.php?t=368&page=3
I decided to start a new thread on it. It might be best to let it drop altogether but I just reread Will Kinney's article on the subject and have more to say.

I read through his entire discussion and found ONE objective statement, only one and it is not emphasized at all even by him and not even brought up by anyone here. It occurs in his article in the midst of a sea of speculative comments, opinions, guesses and suppositions, and before a long section which does not address the topic at all but attacks the defenders of the new versions instead, which is irrelevant and an unseemly changing of the subject.

Here is the one piece of objective evidence in the whole article:

http://www.geocities.com/brandplucked/strain.html

Quote:

Secondly, and more interestingly, is the work published and edited by the Greek scholar, Ward Allen. In his work, The Coming of the King James Gospels, Mr. Allen and his co-editor Edward Jacobs compiled a work of what is called a collation of the translators' work in progress. From what I have gathered from reading this work is that a 1610 copy of the 1602 Bishop's Bible was taken from the Bodleian library which contained annotations and revision notes made and used by the translators of the A.V. 1611. Hence, what Mr. Allen and Jacobs have provided for us are some of the A.V. translators thoughts on the readings in the Bishop's Bible in the Gospels that had to be changed. One of the most spectacular markings in this entire work is Matthew 23:24. Here you have the Bishop's reading, "Yee blinde guides, which straine out a gnat, and swallow a camell." Of course, the only mark left on the verse is a note altering "out" to "at." So much for a printer's error. It was a deliberate rendition.

This is CRUCIAL but it is stuck in the middle of nothing but a bunch of wild speculations. Why??? Unfortunately the statement is not clear enough to ascertain exactly what the evidence is. Some notes made on a copy of the Bishop's Bible that supposedly indicate what the translators thought must be changed? can this be verified?

If the book by Allen and Jacobs were not $40 plus shipping I'd almost want to have it just to find the reference to this particular quote which I assume they document better, but that truly would be an excessive exertion for such a small point.

But why oh why oh why is so much effort spent on speculative defenses of "strain at" instead of this ONE AND ONLY objective evidence? If this is true, and I'd love it to be true, IT IS THE ANSWER you all want, and NOTHING else anyone has said is any kind of answer at all. It does not matter that the phrase has been accepted as a proverb about excessive exertion on behalf of small problems to the neglect of great problems, it does not matter that we can make sense out of "strain at" even though the earlier Bibles had "strain out" and it is consistent with the Greek while "strain at" is not, etc. etc. etc. NONE of that matters. That's all opinion and guesswork.

But this claim is OBJECTIVE. It is THE evidence needed to support "strain at" over "strain out." It would be far far better if a REASON were given for such a decision, but IF IT IS CLEAR that it was a choice made by the translators, and I do mean CLEAR, VERY CLEAR that it was intentional, that is objective evidence.

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