I just posted a Sunday School Lesson on Matthew 23:24 on the phrase "strain at a gnat" What do you think?

[Steven Avery]

Originally Posted by freesundayschoollessons

I just posted a Sunday School Lesson on Matthew 23:24 on the phrase "strain at a gnat" What do you think?

Hi FSSL,

I think it is amazing that folks like James Price and James White and Rick Norris actually try to find an error in the King James Bible here. Such convolution demonstrates an incredible level of version despair and desperation.

First, please understand that "strain at a gnat" was a deliberate translation for accuracy, not some type of accidental printer error or this or that, as falsely claimed by the Bible correctors. Jeffrey Nachimson points out that this was verified historically by Ward Allen's book "The Coming of the King James Gospels" and Jeffrey also pointed out the technical Greek support for the reading from Danker's Lexicon.

As Jeffrey put it, very simply:

"strain at" depicts the fact that the Pharisees were so hypocritical that they had the effrontery to start straining at the very presence of gnats while engulfing whole camels.

The full excellent Will Kinney piece on straining at the gnat is readable at:

http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/s...thew_23-24.htm
http://www.geocities.com/brandplucked/strain.html
strain AT a gnat, and swallow a camel.
"Ye blind guides, which strain AT a gnat, and swallow a camel."

Shalom,
Steven

Thank you for the articles. I was very familiar with one of them, but not the first one.

The problem is for the KJV reading to make any proper sense in English, the words (the discovery of a) need to be assumed. Why strain so hard to make this work when it simply should have been "strain out" or even "filter."

Getting the translation right, understanding its meaning and promoting the Truth is far more important than loyalty to how the KJV translates it.

please understand that "strain at a gnat" was a deliberate translation for accuracy,

A deliberate translation for accuracy? What do you think this Greek word meant? Did it mean to "strain at" as in looking intently at a gnat or "strain out" as in filtering wine.

[Diligent]

I always get a kick out of Bible correctors bringing up this verse. It has been clearly demonstrated over and over again that the KJV reading is correct. But more importantly, correctors who bring up this verse don't seem to get the irony of their own gnat-straining on this very verse!

[Steven Avery]

Originally Posted by freesundayschoollessons

A deliberate translation for accuracy?

The King James Bible translators actually marked the Bishop's Bible for specific improvement/correction. We know that as an established fact.

Now, please note, when you have studied 20 years of high-level Biblical and classical Greek and other related scholastics such as the rabbinics of Kimchi and Rashi, you will still be light-years behind the world-class translators. Men who were living and breathing and speaking the classical and semitic languages in Oxford and Cambridge. However I doubt that you would, from a position of some knowledge rather than as an amateur Bible corrector, then try to raise the type of gnat-style know-little critique that you pick up from other know-little Bible correctors here.

FSSL, you need to try to get to the root of your Bible-correcting syndrome. The malaise is spiritual, it is simply a symptom, a manifestation, of man's desire to be out from under the direct authority of the word of God. And it manifests in strange incapabilities like actually thinking that the Bible really says "strain out a gnat" and not "strait at a gnat".

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Now, please note, when you have studied 20 years of high-level Biblical and classical Greek and other related scholastics such as the rabbinics of Kimchi and Rashi, you will still be light-years behind the world-class translators. Men who were living and breathing and speaking the classical and semitic languages in Oxford and Cambridge. However I doubt that you would, from a position of some knowledge rather than as an amateur Bible corrector, then try to raise the type of gnat-style know-little critique that you pick up from other know-little Bible correctors here.

So, that level of education makes them perfect men? This is a logical fallacy called an "argument from authority." It does not prove anything.

I could say, "I have such and such many years in Greek and Hebrew training" and say you are wrong because of that. That is absurd logic and does not prove the point.

The point is: They were wrong in that verse.

[Luke]

Seeing as the context is BLIND LEADERS, how could "strain at" mean anything but LOOKING SO INTENSELY (because they can't see anything), and in looking for these minute details, they ignore the major ones that are right in front of them.

If it had anything to do with straining out wine, in what context does a camel fit in? Did camels stomp out the wine press :P

Seeing as the context is BLIND LEADERS, how could "strain at" mean anything but LOOKING SO INTENSELY (because they can't see anything), and in looking for these minute details, they ignore the major ones that are right in front of them.

That is why the translation "strain at" is not good. You also missed the point. The Greek never meant to "look" at intensely.

FSSL, you need to try to get to the root of your Bible-correcting syndrome. The malaise is spiritual, it is simply a symptom, a manifestation, of man's desire to be out from under the direct authority of the word of God.

Now we are bordering on an adhominem. There can be nothing further from the truth. I am not correcting the Bible because I don't want to be under its authority. That is for the JEDP and Q crowd.

I have many versions of God's Word and am under the authority of all of them.