bob

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

Basically this answer as currently written perpetuates the well meaning but harmful view of the Greek as the decoder ring for the NT—if you know it you can unlock the “hidden meaning” from the NT. This is mostly the fault of the way pastors learn and then well-menacingly but generally erroneously apply biblical languages into the pulpit. It primes Christians to be open to being misled by false teachers with mystical sounding false arguments from the biblical languages, and to eres no need for it if people will leave interacting with the Biblical languages to those with linguistic expertise.

To take this out of my word against yours, here’s Strong’s entry for logos: biblehub.com/greek/3056.htm. And here it is for rhema: biblehub.com/greek/4487.htm. While there are differences, if you read through both entries there’s a lot of overlap too which accords with how you see them used in the NT. Also it’s vital with any language to not forget polysemy—most words have a range of senses and the meaning is contextually determined. Greek words often don’t have a single rigid definition. E.g. agape can mean God’s love but it can also refer to the Pharisees’ love of money.

@MikeBorden The example in Matthew is about not swearing by anyone or anything (“34But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all…”). It feels like a stretch to interpret that as anything but “your words” or speech or the like. Sure their speech has thoughts behind it but that’s always the case at some level. The focus of that verse appears to be words more than thoughts.

…especially given that many Christians have been trained by many a well-meaning pastor to believe that deeper meanings of Scripture are hidden just below the surface in the original Greek, and this simply isn’t true in general. Most English translations of the Bible are in general quite faithful, and where there’s ambiguity or range of meaning in the English there usually is in the Greek as well.

To be clear I’m not saying you’re wrong overall, just the it would be good to clarify your answer so as not to imply things not supported by the Greek, namely that there’s a totally sharp distinction between the Greek words logos and rhema in their use in the Bible. Logos is often used to refer to a message in a way that excludes its referring to Jesus. But you are correct that Jesus is The Logos. In general unless one has spent significant time developing expertise in them it’s best not to attempt to use the Biblical languages as more often than not error results.

It is true that as John says Jesus is The Logos. However I would caution against making so much about distinctions between these two Greek words as if they always mean exactly these two things. For example Matthew 5:37 uses logos for the disciples’ speech—it’s not referring to Jesus in that verse. So while you’re right that Jesus is The Logos, your answer would be improved by clarifying that yours is more of a theological answer than a linguistic one because linguistically there isn’t such a razor sharp distinction between those Greek words as your answer might imply to some…

I’m a huge fan of the biblical languages just sensitive to their misuse because I see the harm it has caused to and can cause to the church.

You’ll get a lot more value from Greek once you get past the absolute beginner stage where unknowing mistakes are far more common that generally realized and most “discoveries” and mistakes. And of course since translations are good most often “pous” just means “foot”—there’s nothing new learned.

My advice if you’re up for some unsolicited advice from a stranger on the Internet is if you want to continue to use the Greek (not a bad thing), take some time studying the language. I’m a fan of natural language methods, so I’d recommend the Biblical Language Center’s online course. Not free but reasonable and great.

Or that Greek is more precise than English. The truth is that both languages have their ambiguities. And in many cases they overlap. But sometimes something that would be clear in English is ambiguous in Greek and vice versa.

I also came to it with myths I’d picked up from well-meaning but linguistically I’ll-informed pastors and teachers. For example I though agape meant a holy pure love, God’s love but actual use of the word contradicts that.

I will say that in my Greek study journey, at first I made mistakes with Greek frequently and didn’t realize it. My confidence was high, my awareness of my lack of knowledge was low. For example I didn’t understand Greek’s fluid word order or case system.

I commend you for reading God’s word, it’s a treasure that is often neglected, and it’s a great that you’re digging into it! :) Agreed the vast majority of our translations are excellent, and agreed that a good many false teachings based on Greek are based on faulty use of Greek. It’s not always easy to understand why it’s faulty (e.g. JW’s false claim from the Greek that Jesus is “a god” not “God”;

And it has given me tools to refute common myths about the Greek.

I have only found it to add significant depth a handful of times. But it has been really cool to read the text directly, and it’s helped me understand translation and why there are difficult to translate passages.

Full disclosure I’m not a Greek grammar expert. But I have studied it as language diligently for enough years that I no longer remember how many. :) And I’ve read a good bit of the Bible in Greek. Learning the language has value. Just not the value that most assume.

You’re not wrong about what you found in those lexicon entries but my point wasn’t that they can’t be different it’s that they aren’t necessarily, in all or even most cases significantly different and they certainly do not each have a single rigid definition. And if you take each Strongs w try as a whole you see that.

I think you’re giving Greek too much credit and English too little. It’s probably better to say that the languages are distinct so some things don’t translate well between them. Greek can be highly nuanced or not. English likewise. They’re both languages, neither with special status (other than that God chose Greek to record the NT which is pretty cool. :)).

Basically this answer as currently written perpetuates the well meaning but harmful view of the Greek as the decoder ring for the NT—if you know it you can unlock the “hidden meaning” from the NT. This is mostly the fault of the way pastors learn and then well-menacingly but generally erroneously apply biblical languages into the pulpit. It primes Christians to be open to being misled by false teachers with mystical sounding false arguments from the biblical languages, and to eres no need for it if people will leave interacting with the Biblical languages to those with linguistic expertise.

To take this out of my word against yours, here’s Strong’s entry for logos: biblehub.com/greek/3056.htm. And here it is for rhema: biblehub.com/greek/4487.htm. While there are differences, if you read through both entries there’s a lot of overlap too which accords with how you see them used in the NT. Also it’s vital with any language to not forget polysemy—most words have a range of senses and the meaning is contextually determined. Greek words often don’t have a single rigid definition. E.g. agape can mean God’s love but it can also refer to the Pharisees’ love of money.

@MikeBorden The example in Matthew is about not swearing by anyone or anything (“34But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all…”). It feels like a stretch to interpret that as anything but “your words” or speech or the like. Sure their speech has thoughts behind it but that’s always the case at some level. The focus of that verse appears to be words more than thoughts.

To be clear I’m not saying you’re wrong overall, just the it would be good to clarify your answer so as not to imply things not supported by the Greek, namely that there’s a totally sharp distinction between the Greek words logos and rhema in their use in the Bible. Logos is often used to refer to a message in a way that excludes its referring to Jesus. But you are correct that Jesus is The Logos. In general unless one has spent significant time developing expertise in them it’s best not to attempt to use the Biblical languages as more often than not error results.

…especially given that many Christians have been trained by many a well-meaning pastor to believe that deeper meanings of Scripture are hidden just below the surface in the original Greek, and this simply isn’t true in general. Most English translations of the Bible are in general quite faithful, and where there’s ambiguity or range of meaning in the English there usually is in the Greek as well.

It is true that as John says Jesus is The Logos. However I would caution against making so much about distinctions between these two Greek words as if they always mean exactly these two things. For example Matthew 5:37 uses logos for the disciples’ speech—it’s not referring to Jesus in that verse. So while you’re right that Jesus is The Logos, your answer would be improved by clarifying that yours is more of a theological answer than a linguistic one because linguistically there isn’t such a razor sharp distinction between those Greek words as your answer might imply to some…

…important than the specific project. Again a general suggestion. Not really in a position to help you figure out exactly what to do in your specific situation.

And I feel you on the passion for doing a good job. Just make sure not to let that accidentally drive you into unproductive working relationships with your coworkers. Sometimes (usually) the relationship is more…

So either you needed to / need to find a different advisor or do something else, or you needed to find a way to work with them and try to make the best of a bad situation. One thing I’ve learned from many years in the workplace is that there are some situations where you just cannot win, but you can avoid making them worse and you can almost always leave if you decide it’s best to do so.

It’s hard to say exactly what you should do not having all context (not being there with you) of your situation, but it sounds like there may not have been a path to success in your situation.

One final thing I may add to my answer: take a look at how you’re communicating and maybe read up on learning how to speak persuasively, especially to people who have authority over you. It’s a difficult skill to learn but very important and it may also be in play here. You may be communicating the information accurately but not persuasively. Note that some people will not be persuaded no matter what and I’m not saying that’s your fault. But there is a skill that can be learned to at least improve your odds of success when communicating.

Also sometimes you can help the truth of your predictions become evident faster by helping speed the work along, though this doesn’t always work (sometimes you’re strong armed away from the tasks that would let you do this) and it can be risky b/c you could set yourself up to be a convenient scape goat if you turn out to be right. Knowing how to navigate this type of situation is a skill that comes with practice. And like I said, sometimes you can help fix it, sometimes you can’t and you either keep your head down or move on.

If your only option is between naysaying so often you get sidelined, and watching your career get sidelined, then my point number four may come into play. That may be the case here. Your university may differ but from my memory there’s very little incentive for a professor to ever prioritize an undergraduate researcher’s advancement over or even on par with a PhD’s advancement. So you’re automatically going to be quite low in the pecking order no matter how amazing a job you do. It may simply be time to go to grad school. As others said you don’t usually need publications to do so.

By harm I mean physical harm or significant harm of any other kind. Not getting a paper published wouldn’t check that box IMO. Someone losing their job might (I say might b/c sometimes you can’t stop someone from walking off a career cliff). A whole team losing their jobs would be a significant harm and worth significant naysaying, though even there there’s a time say “I’m not the boss, they are” and accept that the responsibility for success or failure lies with them and you can’t change their mind if they’re unwilling to let it be changed.

@Annix I haven’t confirmed it myself last a cursory look but the Wikipedia page for Thomson’s lamp appears to show its connection to the Grandi series.

I agree with the interpretation yielded by the Grandi series value of 1/2 being that a superposition of states exists at x=2. I did some numerical simulation in Excel and the instantaneous probability of being in any given state quickly converges to 1/2 as you approach x=2, so you can think of it as being in both states at once since it’s no long a value but rather a probability distribution or superposition. If the Grandi series equaled 1, it was be on, if 0 it would be off. It’s halfway between those two possibilities (1/2) hence in superposition.

@JohnBollinger Btw my own numerical simulations in Excel confirm your intuition about tail intervals and probability converging to 50%.

I wasn’t speaking precisely enough. You’re right. I meant that at x=2 you have a probability distribution and was using my convergence of probability distribution argument as a hand-wavy way to show that there is a probability distribution at x=2 that describes the behavior there, not that the distribution exists for other values of x. Thanks for showing me the need to clarify.

…in all states at once. You don’t need a physical lamp here to reach an unintuitive state nor to (if my superposition interpretation is valid) to resolve it. A function like this being undefined at a point as a consequence of the properties of the function isn’t weird in the sense that it’s just an accepted part of math but it is deeply unintuitive because it’s so different from our daily experience in life.

One thought I had is that you should be able to define a probability of the function (or lamp) being in a given state at a given time and then take the limit of that probability as you approach time 2 (or x=2). My hunch is that that probability limit will be defined and that you could construct a limiting probability distribution at x=2 and thus say that at x=2 the function f is undefined but is instead in a superposition of all states governed by this distribution. Thus the superposition providing intuition as to why the function is undefined at that point: because in some loose sense it’s…

I agree it’s not so for us now, but I believe I read that the paradox was formulated to reason about divergent series?

But if you define instead a function f(x) whose support follows the time intervals of the problem and which alternates between the values zero and one, then the argument would be that its value f(2) is not defined. So you’d still have a paradox independent of physics. If I’m not mistaken the paradox is another way of talking about divergent series, i.e. of the f(x) not having a limit at x=2.

Each of us is the servant in the NT parable who owes the effectively infinite debt (10,000 talents or billions and billions of dollars) to God because of our sin. Jesus was right when he called us wicked. But God is merciful and patient.

Note that God’s judgement is always just and right. We don’t understand it, we don’t understand the severity of our sin, we think we and all other people are basically good and so think ourselves worthy of good and God wrong when he punishes us in any way, when the reality is the reverse: we all deserve death in hell, but he shows goodness and mercy to us daily and we don’t realize it. Much of the OT is hard to understand I think partly because our world now is so different but more so because we neither understand how sinful we are nor how holy God is.

…He sent his prophets knowing they would be mistreated and killed, in love desiring to lead Israel to repentance, culminating in sending his Son Jesus to die for their sins (and the sins of the Gentiles) and to bring them back to himself. Jesus carried out that exact mission on the earth. They are one and the same.

There is no difference in character. Jesus’ mission in his first coming was to seek and save that which was lost. His second coming will be to conquer and judge and he will slay with the double-edged sword from his mouth and cast into the lake of fire. There is both love and judgement in Jesus’ person every but as much in the Father’s person as seen in the OT. They are the same. Much love and mercy is present in the OT when you realize that God’s people devolved into abject idolatry just over the threshold of Egypt and God spared them. And continued to, over and over again…

Jesus actually said this multiple times, so either he is God as he claimed or he would be a liar. There’s no middle ground here.

For #3 Jesus covered that when he said he had power to raise his life back up. Mere men cannot raise themselves back to life. But Jesus being God in the flesh—yep!

Hebrews explains your #1 showing that’s why Jesus took on flesh in part so he could be tempted. It was his humanity that he took on that permitted that. It was additive not subtractive.

God allows himself to be mocked for a time (people often get away with it for a short time) but he will not ultimately be mocked by anyone (all who reject Jesus spend eternity in hell). Jesus could and still can be mocked for a short time, but all who mock by denying him without repentance will in the end suffer the consequences. So Jesus cannot be mocked in the same way that it is said in Galatians that God cannot be mocked, so your difference #2 isn’t a difference.

Also could you provide Scripture references for all of your points? You did for some but not for all.