Apollumi = “destroy”?

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[Usual caveat applies: I am not a Greek scholar, so I draw on the knowledge of those who are]

The question to be explored here is whether the Greek word apollumi implies the complete and permanent destruction (annihilation) of something.

According to Bill Mounce, the basic meaning of this word is ‘to destroy, perish, lose.’

The following examples illustrate the range of meaning:

“to make void” (the wisdom of the wise, 1 Cor 1:19),

“to lose” (one’s reward, Mt 10:42),

“to be lost” (referring to the lost sheep of Israel, Mt 10:6).

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2 Kings 15:27 – ‘Pekah…reigned in Samaria for twenty years’

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15:27 In the fifty-second year of King Azariah’s reign over Judah, Pekah son of Remaliah became king over Israel. He reigned in Samaria for twenty years.

The chronology of Pekah’s reign is fraught with difficulty: there appears not to be room for a 20-year reign.

The difficulty is summed up by Archer (Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties):

‘Second Kings 15:27 states that “Pekah son of Remaliah became king over Israel in Samaria—twenty years.” (NASB inserts “and reigned” in italics before “twenty years.”)

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Mt 20:29; Mk 10:46; Lk 18:35 – Approaching, or leaving, Jericho?

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Matthew 20:29-30 As they were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed them.  Two blind men were sitting by the road. When they heard that Jesus was passing by, they shouted, “Have mercy on us, Lord, Son of David!”

Mark 10:46 They came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus the son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the road.

Luke 18:35 As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the road begging.…

Mt 28:19 – “Go and make disciples of all nations”

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Mt 28:19 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 28:20 teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

What should we make of the fact that, in the original Greek, the word translated ‘go’ is a participle – ‘going’?

Murray Harris (Navigating Tough Texts, p24) comments that the Greek grammar here is often misunderstood.  It is said that there is no command to ‘go’, but only a participle, ‘going’. …

Inerrancy – a mainly American problem?

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Michael Bird, while not disavowing biblical inerrancy, is concerned with how that doctrine has functioned, especially in North America.

‘American evangelicals demand a rigid precision for inerrancy not shared by the global church, they position inerrancy rather than christology as the chief marker of orthodoxy, and they police inerrancy in their networks with a Taliban-esque ferocity.’

Moreover, suggests Bird, when they seek to defend inerrancy what they often end up doing is defending the inerrancy of their own interpretation of Scripture and the hegemony of their own evangelical tribe.…

John 1:29 – ‘The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’

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1:29 On the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 1:30 This is the one about whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is greater than I am, because he existed before me.’ 1:31 I did not recognize him, but I came baptizing with water so that he could be revealed to Israel.”

What does this identification of Jesus as ‘the Lamb of God’ mean?…

‘The LGBTQ+ community’ – an ‘incoherent’ concept

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Are you willing to ‘stand with the LGBTQ+ community’?

Mike Starkey responds by saying that the question is incoherent, because the very concept of ‘the LGBTQ+ community’ is itself incoherent.

In general terms, the ‘acronym’ LGBTQ+ is too fluid and too diverse to be meaningful.  In the 1980s, the first three letters (LGB) sufficed.  Stonewall add the ‘T’ in 2015.  The versions of the acronym exist today, with LGBTQ+ being currently approved by Stonewall.  The ‘+’ stands for a growing number of additions.…

How can we speak of ‘sin’ in a post-Christian world?

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A precis of this article by Michael Bird.

Here in the West, we live in a ‘diverse, secular, and pagan world’ which has a thin overlay of its past Christianity.

In such a world, ‘religious’ words, such as sin, repentance, faith, and redemption, convey meanings that are very different from those intended by Christians.

This is especially so with respect to the word ‘sin’:

‘Our English word to unchurched ears sounds like archaic, moralizing, religious rhetoric.

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1 Jn 4:8 – ‘God is love’

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4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. 4:8 The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 4:9 By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. 4:10 In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.…

2 Tim 2:13 – ‘If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful’

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2:11 This saying is trustworthy:
If we died with him, we will also live with him.
2:12 If we endure, we will also reign with him.
If we deny him, he will also deny us.
2:13 If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, since he cannot deny himself.

Is this meant to console, or to warn?  Does Paul mean that God will remain faithful to his gracous promises, or to his threat of judgement?

Following are the main interpretative options.…