Forgivness & Confession

[Borealis]

He started the rcc far as I can tell.He permited it to hapen so he had controll.

You obviously can't tell very far, then. Christ started the Catholic Church 300 years before Constantine got involved. The Anabaptists claim, like the Mormons and JWs, that they are the 'real' Christian Church. And like the Mormons and JWs, they can't prove it, because there's absolutely no record of such beliefs in early Christianity.

Constantine merely ended the persecution of the Christian faith by legitimizing it and making it the official state religion for the Empire. A nice change, considering what the Romans were doing for the previous three centuries. But 'Constantine starting the Roman Catholic Church' is a mind-blowing spin on history. It actually ranks up there with 'The Septuagint didn't exist until after the New Testament' and 'The Council of Trent added books to the Bible' for sheer ridiculousness.

And as for me not having an 'open mind,' there's a difference. I've looked at the alternatives, and I've followed the evidence to where it leads. I don't ignore vast tracts of Scripture when they don't conform to what I want them to say.

 

[prodromos]

Constantine merely ended the persecution of the Christian faith by legitimizing it and making it the official state religion for the Empire.

It was Theodosius who made Christianity the state religion for the Empire, not Constantine. Constantine brought an end to the persecution of Christians and established Sunday as a non-working day, basically freeing Christians to worship openly during the daylight hours of Sunday where previously it was done in secret after sundown on Saturday.

John.

 

[Archangel]

Sorry, I have a habit of using abbreviations, and (wrongly) assume everyone else understands. Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich (abbreviated BDAG) is the standard Greek lexicon (dictionary) of the NT and post NT era for Greek. It was published as the 3rd ed in 2000. The 1979 edition is called BAGD. The reason for the order change of names is that in the most recent Danker was more critical in many revisions. BTW he was 94 when the book was published in 2000.

Ah right, No problems. I don't have much knowledge of Greek text, i mostly use NIV KJ and NewLiving for bible study. I would only use KJ if a commentry uses it also..then it can help me read along too.
The NL is simple to read...good if it is hard to understand what the passage is saying. And I use NIV the most, because my church uses it and it is generally a good translation.

Well, that is a problem with translations. Ultimately doctrine is decided based upon the Greek/Hebrew, not a translation. The NIV happens to not be the best in the verse (and several others). Thus, the advantage of having several English translations is not to claim "one is the best" but rather, how can they all help us better understand the underlying Greek/Hebrew.

Translations come from two different approaches to translation method: Formal Equivalence (often wrongly named word-for-word) and Meaning-Based.

Among FE translations are: NAS, NKJV,KJV, ESV, RSV,

Among the MB translations are: GW, NLT, NIV, NET, CEV, etc.

Thus, if you begin to compare several translations (good to get at least one from each group), then you can get a better grasp of the text.

It would be good if I could speak Greek and Hebrew as second languages...then I would never struggle with translations lol

 

[SumTinWong]

Take a look at BDAG to see the range of meaning.

I don't have a spare $125 for the book so what is it if you don't mind?