Show Notes
This week we're taking something beloved and ruining it! Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but we're definitely going to ruffle some feathers.
The King James Version of the Bible is treasured for its poetic, often florid language. Many even believe it to be the most accurate, truest version available in English. Those people are wrong. Or at least, we'll show you why that's a problematic stance.
Then, when is God not actually God? Buckle up, because we're letting linguistic nerdom take us on a fascinating journey. There are instances in the old Greek manuscripts where the word for God isn't presented in the same way as others.
Could something as simple as the lack of a definite article ("the") actually change what the biblical authors were talking about entirely? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Open an English Bible and you'll mostly see "God" and "Lord," but underneath is a whole divine vocabulary: El, Eloah, Elohim, the tetragrammaton, and a few choice insults, including gillulim, which likely comes from a word for dung (shit gods, basically). First, we sort out which plural belongs to which singular (spoiler: Elohim isn't the plural of El), why Deuteronomy uses Elohim more than any other book, and how the Shema's "your God" quietly assumes other gods are out there.
This week, Paul finally gets his day in court — several of them, actually, and he spends nearly all of them in custody.