Be Careful

[MarvelousMarvin]

There is a lot of excellent teaching material here on the BF website. However, while reading through "Common Misconceptions", I found a basic error in http://www.biblicalfamilies.org/commonmisc#ref3 (III. Own Husband, Own Wife.) The same error is repeated in the section http://www.biblicalfamilies.org/commonmisc#ref19 (XIX. Eve, not Eve, Mary, Jane, and Jill)

This point:

In Matthew 19:8, the Greek 'gune' is translated as wives and in 1 Corinthians 7:2 it is translated as wife, does that mean gune can mean either wife or wives?

is a false argument. The definition is obviously taken from Strong's dictionary, probably the e-Sword version (which I use.) Strong's, as well as most dictionaries that are keyed to Strong's numbers, reduces every word to its ROOT. This can be very misleading in many cases. One must look at the Greek word in a Greek New Testament (I use an interlinear) to see that, in Matthew 19:8, the word is not "γυνή" (gune), but rather, " γυναικας " and in 1 Corinthians 7:2, it is "γυναικα." Note the trailing sigma ("s") character in the word in Matthew. In this case, the sigma makes the word plural, just as a trailing "s" does for many English words. In both cases, the ROOT word is "γυνή.", which is Strong's number G1135.

The same precaution must be taken for Hebrew words when using Strong's Dictionary, as well.

We need to be very careful not to use bad exegesis – it is ABSOLUTELY not necessary, and is, in fact, counter-productive. The Bible is already very much polygynous in its teaching, even without us straining to find more "proofs." Errors like this give the anti-PM crowd "ammunition" to accuse us of faulty Bible interpretation. Of course, of necessity, they ALWAYS use bad exegesis when attempting to "prove" that polygyny is called sin...

So far, this is the only such error I have found on the BF website. Excellent work, whoever wrote the "Common Misconceptions" section!

 

[Doc]

I see what you are saying. What editing recommendations would you suggest that follows the correct Biblical interpretation?

Blessings,

Doc

 

[Doc]

I see what you are saying now....I will talk to the Grand Poobah of editing and see what we can do.

Doc

 

[MarvelousMarvin]

Sorry for the delay in answering your question, Doc. I was away from the forum for a day or 2 and did not see your reply to my post until this morning.

I don't claim to be a Greek scholar - in that department, I defer to Dr. Allen. Having said that, I will admit to having taken a few Greek classes and studying Greek on my own as much as I can find time to do so. Maybe I'll reach "Greek scholar" status in another 3 or 4 decades! (If the Lord tarries and I live that long...)

In my humble opinion, the best way to correct the error would be to simply remove the non-argument. No matter how you slice it, dice it, or mangle it, Greek is an exact language. (Which is one reason God chose it for the NT!) If the writer (Apostle Paul, Apostle John, or whoever) intended to say "wives," he used the correct plural form of "gune." Likewise, if he meant "wife," he again chose the correct singular form of the word. It is unfortunate that the late great Dr. Strong set up his famous dictionary in the manner he did, reducing every Greek word to its root. My Greek professor (the same pastor who gave me the left foot of fellowship when I questioned the false monogamy-only doctrine!) told us to avoid Strong's Dictionary like the plague. Strong's can be very misleading at times. I still use it, but with an awareness of its shortcomings.

As already stated, the Bible very strongly teaches about true Christian marriage, so we do not need to use questionable arguments to prove our position. We should leave isogesis and bad exegesis to the anti-Biblical-marriage crowd. After all, that is the only way they can "prove" their false doctrine!