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CantThinkofaUserName

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"10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs"

It seems as if in most of the translations of the bible on biblegateway.com, the word "kinds" is placed in the above verse.

Does anyone on here study or read Aramaic and perhaps has come across how the original verse reads? Was the word (or one that closely resembles) "kinds" in there? If so, what is that word? How is it spelled and pronounced?

p.s. And if I could slightly side-step: Does anyone know if there is an Aramaic study bible? You know, something that has, say, the Aramaic word, and then, right beside it, the English translation? Or does such a thing not exist?
 

AlexBP

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Blue Letter Bible is an excellent resource if you wish to investigate the Bible as originally written. Here is their page for the particular passage in question. They define the Greek pas as either "all" or "some of all types", so it seems that either the KJV's "the root of all evil" or the NIV's "root of all kinds of evil" would be understandable as a translation.
 
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Mr Dave

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Greek would have been the language in which the Letter was written. I don't have my Greek NT to hand (which has notes about every manuscript to check which MSS have 'kinds' and if it is missing in some), however I can quote the Greek to you from here http://www.greekbible.com/index.php;

ῥίζα γὰρ πάντων τῶν κακῶν ἐστιν ἡ φιλαργυρία, ἧς τινες ὀρεγόμενοι ἀπεπλανήθησαν ἀπὸ τῆς πίστεως καὶ ἑαυτοὺς περιέπειραν ὀδύναις πολλαῖς.

The necessary bit is,

ῥίζα γὰρ πάντων τῶν κακῶν ἐστιν ἡ φιλαργυρία

which literally goes

ῥίζα - γὰρ - πάντων - τῶν - κακῶν - ἐστιν - ἡ - φιλαργυρία

root - for - of all - of the - evils - is - the - love of money


The word you are asking about is πάντων which is the Genitive plural of πᾶς which means, all of/every/all kinds of/every one of etc... so although there is no word used in the Greek for 'kinds' it is there. It's just because of the way of the Greek language that it is implied in one word which encompasses 'all kinds of'.

In doing this, my Greek lexicon said for this verse;

πάντα τα κακα - all kinds of evil

So this suggests (due to the age of the lexicon) that this is the prevalent view from the Textus Receptus/Byzantine MSS (the ones used in the KJV) and the above quoted is from the 'Alexandrian MSS' which are older MSS.
 
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CantThinkofaUserName

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Thanks so much, guys. That link is amazing, Alex - can't thank you enough.

Mr Dave, really appreciate you breaking it down for me. Very helpful. I guess it's left for us to decipher and understand that it doesn't literally mean "all" but rather all "kinds" of evil.

Gotta couple more questions, if you guys don't mind.

1.) Mr Dave, are there different ways of spelling "kinds" in Greek? I ask because in the link Alex provided, "kinds" is spelled, "πᾶς", whereas you say that it's, "πάντων."

2.) I don't know how exactly the bible was written and wonder: Where were the Greeks getting the scripture? Were they inspired by God or were they translating from an original source? If the latter, what language was that original writing?
 
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Mr Dave

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Mr Dave, really appreciate you breaking it down for me. Very helpful. I guess it's left for us to decipher and understand that it doesn't literally mean "all" but rather all "kinds" of evil.

No problem :)
Yeah, that's one of the things with translating, getting across all the ideas that are presented/staying as faithful to the original as possible but also writing in a way that sounds natural in the 'destination language'. You can understand a literal word for word translation but no-one would ever talk like that, so IMO putting 'kinds' in is no issue here as although there isn't a separate word in the Greek, it is implied and by placing it in the English it prevents a clumsy translation.

Gotta couple more questions, if you guys don't mind.

1.) Mr Dave, are there different ways of spelling "kinds" in Greek? I ask because in the link Alex provided, "kinds" is spelled, "πᾶς", whereas you say that it's, "πάντων."

Yes there are different ways of spelling 'all kinds'.

The root of the word is "πᾶς" and is what you will find in a dictionary.
What you find written in the Greek though is "πάντων" which is the same word but in the plural and in the genitive case. Greek is a very specific language so there is a conjugation for every case and for whether the word is plural or singular.

In the same way, in an English dictionary, you wouldn't find the word 'bought', but would have to look up the root word which is 'buy'.

2.) I don't know how exactly the bible was written and wonder: Where were the Greeks getting the scripture? Were they inspired by God or were they translating from an original source? If the latter, what language was that original writing?

That depends on which bit they were writing :D

There is the Septuagint (LXX) which is Greek translation of what we would call the Old Testament and Apocrypha which was translated in c.300 BC. For this bit of scripture in Greek, they had original documents from which they translated. They translated from both Hebrew and Aramaic; most of the old Testament was Hebrew, with Daniel being in Aramaic (and I think there a few chapters of Jeremiah which were also in Aramaic).

For the Gospels and Acts, the writers were recording their own experiences and the experiences of others so wrote down what happened. For the letters in the NT (of which 1 Tim, is) The writers wrote down what they felt was needed to say to whoever they were sending it to (like today, a letter as a specific person/specific people in mind with a specific reason for sending it).
As few people were literate back then, to send a letter was a quite a big deal, as you needed someone who was literate to write it, and then you needed to have it sent (the letters of the NT are sent all across the Mediterranean area). As a result, any letters that were sent, especially coming from the leaders of the church who had known Jesus, were seen to be very special, so the letters would be copied so others could read what Paul, Peter etc... had said. Once you get to this stage, the copies that we now have of the letters are copies in Greek which were copied from Greek, not translated.

That said, Christians do believe that God helped to inspire the writings.
 
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