Oh! and also from Thomas Allin’s Christ Triumphant – enjoying reading the new edition from Robin Parry, which has polished up some of the spelling, etc. in the snippet below which I found from the public domain copies online –
Hebrews 6 needs to understood in the context of the Spies who rejected the Land in Numbers. They lost their Inheritance, but were Forgiven. Chuck Missler commentary on that passage is the best.
Hebrews 6 seems to be speaking about Israel as a whole, who at the time had abandoned the true faith and had become so corrupt in their ways that it was impossible for it to be renewed. This is the same principle as expressed in the sayings that you cannot sew new cloth to an old garment, or that you cannot put new wine into old wineskin. Another such example is that of a garden or a lawn. If not properly taken care of, over time it will become so overgrown with weeds that the best thing to do is simply rototill everything under and start anew.
I am not much interested in continuing a non-discussion with someone who complains that answers are too detailed in examining the scriptures and insists on a simpler answer instead, and then when given a simpler version of the same answer complains that the answer is too simple and should be more detailed on the scriptures instead. That verges hard on mere trolling; and indeed until a new member pm’d me for some questions on the thread, I had completely forgotten it even existed despite not even a month and a half having passed since I last posted here.
But since the new member asked me to…
No, I just get busy / distracted doing other things. Also sometimes I just don’t think the respondent is actually having a discussion or is too focused on an idea to see invalidity problems or where the evidence actually points or he’s just ignoring data no matter how much the data is mentioned. In that case I move along, anything else is only wasting my limited time and energy.
He’s almost certainly referring to 4:3, “And it will come about that he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy – everyone who is recorded for life in Jerusalem.” But that’s a continuation of verse 2, which is talking about the righteous remnant who survived the coming of YHWH. They’re being contrasted to the filthy daughters (analogically speaking) who, after (by comparison) not surviving, are petitioning for reconciliation, in a poetic description comparing them to defeated women begging to be the concubines of victorious soldiers.
Even if the verse is referring to unrighteous survivors (although they are being contrasted to those being called the survivors), it’s these filthy daughters of Zion (the proud and seductive daughters of Zion, denounced back in 3:16-26) who are being washed and purged of their filth and murders by the Spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning, so that they will also be called by the name of those righteous survivors whose name is recorded for life in Jerusalem.
Admittedly, some Christians think the proper thing to do will be to spurn such penitents unmercifully when they repent and beg for readmittance like the prodigal son. 
You know – the way such Christians themselves were unmercifully wiped out when God finally brought them to repent of their sins to become one of the clean instead of filthy daughters of Zion. Right? 
But I am not one of those Christians. And I don’t think Isaiah 4 is teaching that at all.
But I wasn’t “assuming” it was “figurative”, I was demonstrating that the phraseology doesn’t in itself signal a hopeless finality. BB is just willfully ignoring direct evidence of how that phrase is used. (And also how the term for wail is sometimes used; scriptural evidence decisively shows it isn’t intrinsically a signal for hopelessly final judgment and people being permanently lost either.) Doesn’t matter whether the phrase is literal or not, it’s a cry for pity on the object.
It could still be used in relation to a situation of hopeless finality – I’ve never denied that – but the concept of the phrase itself (better for someone not to have been born) doesn’t intrinsically require hopeless finality, demonstrated by scriptural evidence itself, and that’s all I have ever argued in regard to that phrase: it isn’t decisive evidence against Iscariot being ultimately saved from his sins.
(That isn’t all I have ever argued in regard to what Jesus says about Judas at (or rather after) the Last Supper as a whole, but I referred to more detailed commentary on those scriptures elsewhere.)
No doubt Iscariot was also included (and the lesser Judas for that matter), but he isn’t the one being named out for rebuke.
BB acknowledges the warnings for Peter et al at Matt 18 (and its parallels) apply to Peter et all, but he wants them to be different from the warning directed at Judas; but since those warnings for Peter et al at Matt 18 (et par) are among the big guns commonly cited for finally hopeless punishment and non-salvation of some sinners, then then BB has to look for some difference so that they’ll apply only to Iscariot and not to the other apostles after all.
The proposed difference is supposedly that unlike Peter (et al), Judas “learns about his woeful fate in the context of his betrayal, which puts him in opposition to Christ”. As though Peter et al were not in opposition to Christ when being given those warnings (and being called Satan etc.) In fact, the Last Supper itself starts with the apostles (plural) STILL SQUABBLING AMONG THEMSELVES ON EXACTLY THE SAME TOPIC (which of them is the greatest) FOR WHICH JESUS THREW THOSE GEHENNA / TORMENTOR / UNQUENCHABLE EONIAN FIRE WARNINGS AT THEM!
After which, they all, including Peter, and very obviously including Iscariot, partake of the new covenant at the Lord’s Supper.
After which, Iscariot goes out to betray Jesus to death.
After which, Peter is not only warned that he’s no better than Iscariot, but goes so far as to curse himself with oaths in order to deny Christ and save himself.
If Peter (of all people explicitly mentioned in the scriptural accounts afterward) doesn’t learn about just how bad it is for him to literally curse himself in order to deny Christ three times “in the context of his betrayal, which puts him in opposition to Christ” (not to say all the other original remaining eleven apostles during their abandonment of Christ), a warning about which Jesus spends more time on in all four Gospel reports of the Last Supper than on wailing for Iscariot, then narrative details must mean nothing and we can all just cheerfully ignore inconvenient things of that sort.
But I’m not the one ignoring such details in order to make my theology fit more easily. The only salient difference between Iscariot and Peter, is that Iscariot kills himself (rejecting his betrayal of Jesus) before Jesus comes back.
What I actually said, is that Peter and Iscariot both betrayed Jesus to death in some overtly cursed ways before the sending of the Holy Spirit. More specifically, I wrote, “If you answer that Peter’s flagrant self-cursing to deny Jesus was before the gift of the Holy Spirit, I will answer that so was Iscariot’s betrayal, since those all happened the same night (and indeed Jesus warns Simon Peter that, in effect, he is no better than Iscariot but will fail his oaths of loyalty by being sifted by Satan. Which is exactly what happens.)”
For what it’s worth, I do principally connect what happened with Iscariot to the denunciations at Heb 6 and Heb 10 (the Hebraist might even have had him in mind, though I don’t see any direct evidence for that).
If Peter took communion at the Lord’s Supper, which he did, then he was included in the new covenant which Jesus said He instituted with the Lord’s Supper. I know there are people who argue otherwise, but that’s because they don’t want to think Peter could literally curse himself afterward to deny Christ, or they don’t want to think someone who does that can be restored (or apparently they don’t want to think either of them as with BB). Peter trampled the sacrifice of the Son of God more thoroughly underfoot than Iscariot was ever recorded doing. The people empowered to do attesting signs in the name of Christ for sake of the name of Christ, whom Jesus denounces as workers of injustice, sending them into the outer darkness where the weeping is and the gnashing of the teeth, also count as people who have tasted the good things of the Spirit; and that applies to both Peter and Iscariot, too, since they were empowered that way at least once (maybe twice, maybe more generally than that) to act as ambassadors for Jesus during His earthly ministry.
Simon Peter shows differently, unless we’re going to pretend that Simon Peter (and all the other apostles and whatever disciples were around at that time) didn’t partake of the new covenant at the Lord’s Supper. He had also been given power to work miracles already in apostolic proclamation when Jesus sent out the Twelve around the mid-point of His ministry. He is absolutely an example of how someone who has been partaking of the Holy Spirit already, and even doing miracles with the powers of the coming age, can fall to the side, and renounce Christ as a rebel deserving a cursed death, holding Him up for scorn.
Also, as mentioned upthread (with links to discussions on the topic), the grammar there can just as easily read, where BB stops short, “impossible to restore them again to repentance while or so long as they are crucifying Christ again to themselves putting Him to open shame.”
That really solves everything quite easily, synching it up with Peter’s example along the way. But then the Hebraist isn’t talking about an intrinsically hopeless punishment anymore, and some people will try anything to keep the hopeless punishment there.
Instead, the Hebraist is talking about a situation where, even if the impenitent keep on sinning, their {telos} or completion will come through burning, which is only a restatement of what Paul says in 1 Cor about those whose works of crap are being burned, being saved as through fire. Whereas, the Hebraist yearns for us who remain in the faith “to be showing,” in a public display, “the same diligence toward the assurance of the expectation to the completion,” the same {telos} completion which is burning for those in impenitent rebellion. That assurance is directly connected by the Hebraist here in chapter 6 (and later elsewhere) to the Abrahamic covenant where God promises, swearing by Himself since He has nothing greater to swear upon, that He shall be blessing Abraham with whatever may bless him! (v.13-15) Thus God intends more superabundantly to exhibit the immutability of His counsel to the inheritors of the promise. Which promise? The promise between God and God (thus “an oath by two immutable matters” as the Hebraist puts it, “in which it is impossible for God to be lying”), Father and Son, the Son standing for Abraham as the incarnate descendant of Abraham, to bring all Abraham’s descendants into righteousness, thus showing God’s intention to bring all rational creatures, who can only descend from God, even from the Son, into the covenant of Abraham’s descendants. Consequently, that covenant (made in regard to all rational creatures via the Incarnation of the Creator into the line of Abraham) cannot be broken by Abraham or by any sinning rational creature (unlike the covenant at Sinai, made between God and the Jewish people), so long as the Son, though sinless, voluntarily dies as a dedication to keeping the covenant in effect.
Well, for one thing the Hebraist at Heb 10 is referring to the capital punishment of Deut 32,where God will vindicate the rebel people whom He will punish until they are neither slave nor free, after which and thanks to which they will finally repent and be restored. There are a ton of other OT scriptures (many referenced in the NT) which talk about apostates coming back to faith, too.
Granted, the punishment for new covenant apostasy is even worse – but not hopeless, or the Hebraist wouldn’t have cited a warning and promise of post-mortem repentance and salvation – and certainly so long as someone tramples underfoot the sacrifice of God, insulting the Spirit of grace, then it isn’t as though they can be restored through some other sacrifice instead.
But notice: the one trampling underfoot the sacrifice of God and making it vain, is the one who insists that the sacrifice doesn’t apply to all rational creatures created by God (even as many as the stars in the sky and the sands of the sea, via the covenant made between the Father and the Son, with the Son acting for Abraham as Abraham’s descendant), or who insists that the sacrifice will fail to achieve its object of saving sinners from sin (since God has sworn by Himself in two witnesses by which it is impossible to deny, that He shall accomplish His goal of saving whomever He intends to save from their sins and into righteousness).
I’m sure the relevant problem there is an attitude of the heart, and that mere mistakes along that line (while still as problematic as soldiers nailing Jesus to the cross) will be pardoned (for “they do not know what they are doing”).
But I’ve met people before who will contradict themselves to insist that God cannot or will not save someone whose latter state is worse than their former, even when faced with evidence for God doing just that, on grounds they otherwise accept when pointing to something they think is in their own favor; and Jesus says He’ll be putting those people into the same situation they insisted God cannot or will not save someone from.
Which obviously still cannot be a hopeless punishment, even though Jesus says He will not be merciful on unmerciful people, and will not be forgiving those who insistently deny that God can or will save someone – if I insisted on that, against them in their coming punishment of being put into a situation worse than their former, then I’d be doing the same things such Pharisees were (and often still are) doing! But the topic of thus insulting the Spirit of Grace is quite relevant to interpretations of Heb 10 et al.
I appreciate people like Jason who are willing to take the time. I don’t feel called to defend the doctrine or cast what I consider my pearls before swine. Big Badger was definitely trolling and while I wish him the best and no harm, I do feel any discussion is fruitless with him… You cannot debate with people who think logic is from the devil. But for the sake of others who read this thread, I give thanks to Jason for being willing to provide some rebuttals.
To those who read and think a position is weak due to lack of responses… Consider this: It isn’t worth the effort or time to debate. If God wants you to know something, you will know it. Of this, we can be sure. The world’s system is that which says “the person who has the last word wins the argument/debate”- not so. People willingly drop out of debates merely to save themselves from wasting time. This does not mean they are wrong, nor does it mean they are right. It just means the discussion was not deemed to be worth any more time.
Taking the latter question first: a covenant requires participation, and whether the Lord’s Supper involves the Real Presence or not the participation must be transtemporal (or we couldn’t participate in it after the crucifixion) and Jesus clearly institutes the covenant before the crucifixion.
In that sense it doesn’t matter whether the Hebraist or Paul (I can’t recall offhand if that’s from Galatians or Hebrews, but it’s one of their discussions of the Abrahamic Covenant – maybe Heb 9) meant that a covenant isn’t even a covenant until blood is shed. The shed blood of Christ on the cross counts for the Lord’s Supper before the cross, too.
However, Paul and the Hebraist (if the Hebraist isn’t also Paul) are talking about a covenant definitely already put into effect between the Son and the Father, and if somehow shed blood is required to simply put it into effect then that was already done, too, with the visible YHWH passing between the split animals sacrificed for the Abrahamic Covenant. What those represented, though, was the promise that whoever breaks the covenant would die – but dying doesn’t itself break the covenant, it ratifies the covenant by keeping the conditions of the covenant.
So if two mere humans had made such a covenant, and one of them broke it, then other would be let out of keeping his side of the covenant, unless the one who broke it actually kept the covenant by dying (if that was stipulated as a consequence, which it was in this case.) The survivor would be obligated to keep on keeping his side of the covenant, or else obligated to die as well to substitute for being let out of it.
The way these things worked, though (and we shouldn’t imagine God intrinsically having to make promises this way, especially between the Father and the Son – the covenant was an enacted representation of God’s dedication to fulfilling that particular goal), a descendant of X could stand in for X in making the covenant, and by extension stand in for all of X’s family. Typically these kinds of fidelity covenants were kind of forced on subjects by kings, with a family member of the subordinate party being held hostage (to put it bluntly) as guarantee the weaker party would comply. In this way it was a somewhat more sophisticated and civilized extension of mere hostage taking: comply or we kill your son. By making it a formal agreement, the son could voluntarily die in the event of non-compliance by the weaker family, obligating the stronger party to keep its side of the covenant or else also die. (There are some subtle ancient Near Middle Eastern political ideas here.) Naturally, the hostage son can only do that once; further breaking of the treaty by the weaker party, means no sacrifice remains, and the Hebraist has some things to say about that, too!
However, much of the point of Paul and/or the Hebraist is that the Son and the Father (God swearing upon Himself in two immutable ways) have covenanted with each other in such a way that it is actually impossible for any rational creature to break the covenant so long as Christ dies to keep the covenant in effect (which is a more conceptually accurate interpretation of the verse you’re talking about). That’s the superiority of the promise, to the covenant of the Law at Sinai. Since the covenant was to bring all rational creatures (as descendants of Abraham via Christ the descendant of Abraham and creator of all creatures) to do righteousness, even the one who tramples on the sacrifice of the Son shall still be brought to do righteousness or else the Son and the Father would Themselves be breaking or failing the covenant with each other. Nevertheless, the one who insists the sacrifice of the Son is worthless to save this or that sinner, leaves himself no sacrifice and so must punitively die. That isn’t going to stop God from fulfilling the covenant between Father and Son to bring that sinner to do righteousness; the punishment will be used for that purpose.
Nor however can the person atone himself to God by dying punitively; without repentance there can be no remission of sin, and if the person accepts the death in penitence then the person is actually cooperating with the Son (as we’re all supposed to be doing, dying with the Son instead of in rebellion against the Son, so that we may be rising with the Son). There is no getting around the sacrifice of the Son as though there is some acceptable alternative; we either cooperate with the sacrifice of the Son, or we are not cooperating with the sacrifice of the Son. If we die impenitently, we aren’t dying in cooperation with the Son, and we’ll keep on dying in rebellion until we learn and agree to die in cooperation with the Son. But God isn’t going to give up on us or on anyone: the Persons of God would be Themselves breaking covenant with Each Other. On trinitarian theism, that would be a catastrophe irrecoverably destroying God (by the sundering of the self-existent interpersonal communion) and so also irrecoverably destroying all past, present, and future not-God realities. Which isn’t going to happen, or we wouldn’t be here now to discuss the topic (as I like to point out!)
That’s a direct reference to the incident of the sin against the Holy Spirit. Jesus saves a blind mute demented man whom He describes that way (and GosMatt actually includes a prequel incident a few chapters earlier showing the demented man being healed of being mute! – Luke doesn’t but he keeps that explanation in his report. Mark doesn’t mention that factor in his report.) The Pharisee scribes from Jerusalem in Capernaum to oppose Him, try to use the blind mute demented man as evidence that Jesus’ salvation is from Satan not from God, insisting that God would not or could not save such a person. Jesus denounces them with the sin against the Holy Spirit, and some other colorful rebukes (including some pun-based satire mocking the idea of Satan rising against Satan), and says they’ll be put into the same basic situation (their last state worse than their former) as the guy He insisted on saving which they insisted God couldn’t or wouldn’t save.
If we come along afterward and insist (as a non-salvational attitude in our heart, especially where we’re willing to contradict what we ourselves would accept as true when it seems to be in our favor, not merely a mistaken theology, which is entirely pardonable) that God cannot or will not save them once they’re punished into that state, then we’re coming under the same condemnation that Jesus declared against them, and are at least in danger of being punished like them. Not that that’s a hopeless punishment. But still, better not to put ourselves in that position.
please do not ignore the many Bible passages proclaiming Universal Salvation.Besides, in my view the default position must be that God will not punish human beings forever as such an action would be incomprehensibly evil and not consistent with God’s nature.
Actually, Jesus also calls God their Father; the distinction is in who they are following by their deeds, not an ontological distinction. Similarly, “If you are the sons of Abraham, then do the deeds of Abraham!” and “Now do not be saying to yourselves, ‘Well, we are the children of Abraham!’ For God can raise children to Abraham out of these stones.”
Of course, whoever belongs to Christ and was created by and for Christ, and whoever is given to Christ by the Father, is Christ’s – which as other scriptures indicate (including from Christ’s own testimony), is everyone. Believers are especially Abraham’s descendants in the sense of being grafted into the promises, which God may temporarily graft people out of – and Paul warns we had better not despise those who are currently grafted out, or God will graft us out as well! But Paul consoles himself that those currently grafted out still have the promise, which God will not be faithless about regardless of how faithless those currently grafted out are being. Have they who are stumbling over the stumbling stone (i.e. over Christ), stumbled so as to fall? May it never be! (Paul is referencing at least one OT scripture there saying much the same thing; Jesus referenced the same scripture when denouncing the Pharisees with the Greater Condemnations as reported in GosMatt, as part of His prophecy that eventually they’ll welcome Him with the same hosannas they were denouncing other people for giving Him.)
A lot of this is connected to Paul’s notion of adoption, which was not the same as our modern notion (or rather our modern notion is a truncation of it; the ancient notion could include our modern notion easily, but Paul explicitly isn’t talking about someone adopting children not his own.) So long as children of a father are immature, they have a position no different from slaves, and are put under tutors, even though they are the heirs of everything. The father has the duty, which the perfect father would persist at for all his children, of leading them to maturity (by punitive discipline where necessary), but would not raise them to the position of inheritors and family representatives (doing the family business and being ambassadors for the honor of the family in the world) until they have become personally (not merely physically) mature.
This was a known and accepted rabbinic position of the time, which is why sometimes you can see scribes and teachers talking with Jesus in the Gospels on the question of what people should be doing “in order to be enjoying the allotment of the inheritance” (though that gets lost in translation sometimes).
It’s also related to the idea, which shows up on rare occasion in the OT, that a large number of our “tutors” rebelled, those being the angels (or the gods in Hebrew, the lesser gods and lords not YHWH Elohim Adonai most high), which has screwed up our own development into the mature sons and daughters God intends us to become.
No the text doesn’t say so directly; but Matthew uses verbal foreshadowing of the Pharisaic complaint to connect the two incidents directly, and the connection explains why Jesus brings up the topic of a man saved from demons who doesn’t invite the right person (God, implied) to live in his heart, and so being empty the demon comes back with seven others worse than himself. It isn’t strictly necessary to connect the two incidents – Luke doesn’t even mention the prior incident; the important things are (1) Jesus saved a man in that situation; (2) whom the scribes insisted God could not or would not save (despite such evidence being something they’d insist was from God if their own disciples did it); and (3) that Jesus will be putting them into the situation they insisted God couldn’t or wouldn’t save someone from but which God / Jesus does save people from after all.
I wonder why, then, 59 of 59 (100%) Bible versions here render it “born”:
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Matthew%2026:24
Did they all get it wrong & mistranslate the word?
“The Reformed Quarterly Review, Volume 38”, page 91:
This source above states:
“The primary meaning of this verb is to beget, but that it cannot be thus restricted is evident from…”. And he goes on to list Mt.2:1; 26:24; John 9:2; Rom.9:11; Lk.1:57 (see quotes below).
He adds: “These passages prove that γενναω cannot be limited in its signification to procreation, but usually includes also, the idea of birth.”
Though i don’t see why Mt.26:24 should be included on his list, (even though it seems every version on the planet renders it “born”) other than the point that if it said “conceived” instead of “born” it could be interpreted as a “proof text” against universalism or, rather, seen as a contradiction in the Bible & with universalist passages.
Mt.2: 1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, 2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
Mt.26:24 The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.
John 9:2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
Rom.9: 9 for the word of promise [is] this; ‘According to this time I will come, and there shall be to Sarah a son.’ 10 And not only [so], but also Rebecca, having conceived by one — Isaac our father — 11 (for they being not yet born, neither having done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to choice, might remain; not of works, but of Him who is calling,) it was said to her — 12 ‘The greater shall serve the less;’
Lk.1:57 When the time came for Elizabeth to have her child, she gave birth to a son.
In light of my previous post i will tentatively suggest that the word is ambiguous; it could mean “conceived” or “born”. If Jesus wished to clearly teach ECT or endless annihilation here, then why would He use ambiguous language? Why not instead be crystal clear & state something like it was better for Judas if Judas had “never been” or “never lived”. Or that Judas would “never be saved”, etc. Surely the Greek, or whatever language He spoke, would have been able to convey such an idea.
Vine’s Dictionary says: " “to beget,” in the Passive Voice, “to be born,”…"
Here is one version that doesn’t:
The Son of man goes, even as the Writings say of him: but a curse is on that man through whom the Son of man is given up; it would have been well for that man if he had never come into the world. (Matthew 26:24 BBE) — Bible in Basic English
According to Webster’s dictionary:
“Fig. to be born. I came into this world nearly seventy years ago. Little Timmy came into the world on a cold and snowy night.”
“Our lives changed completely when little Oliver came into the world.”
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man…” (Rom.5:12a)
The Concordant Literal Version also translated γενναω (gennao) as “born” in Mt.26:24.
Its concordance states on p.121:
It lists how the KJV translates the word almost always as either “beget” (49 times) or “be born” (39 times). The CLNT seems to translate it “be born” only 22 times.
According to lexicons i’ve seen the words “τικτω” and “γενναω” can both mean (1) born and (2) beget. For some examples re the former:
If that is correct, then if Jesus had used “τικτω” at Mt.26:24, it would have been unclear whether He was referring to Judas being “born” or “conceived”?
So far 61 of 61 (100%) versions i’ve seen all translate “γενναω” at Mt.26:24 as “born” or the equivalent. Likewise lexicons i’ve checked list the meaning of “γενναω” at Mt.26:24 as “born”. That includes BDAG.
https://lsj.gr/wiki/γεννάω
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/γεννάω
https://biblehub.com/greek/1080.htm
https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/gennao
https://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=3970
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/resources/abbott-smith.html
https://lexicon.katabiblon.com/index.php?lemma=γενναω&diacritics=off
I edited my previous post.
Yes, people refer to having been born as “coming into the world.” But in actuality, is that when a person come into the world? Was that person not in the world 10 minutes before he was born? If the baby was removed from the womb prior to his birth, and kept alive, would it not be a person? Or would it not have “come into the world” because it was never born?
I suggest that the person comes into the world when the sperm enters the egg. Even though we would not call the zygote a “person”, it is gradually becoming what we would call a “person”, and would certainly be called a “person” prior to birth.
The English word “generate” may come from the Latin, but the Greek equivalent is “γενναω” (gennaō)
I looked up the meaning of “generate” and found the following:
early 16th century (in the sense ‘beget, procreate’): from Latin generat- ‘created’, from the verb generare , from genus , gener- ‘stock, race’.
In the sense of “beget, procreate”, and not in the sense of “give birth.”
So again—the Greek word for “give birth” is τικτω" (tiktō) and that for “beget” or “procreate” is “γενναω” (gennaō)
Paidon, i see “γενναω” listed as Strong’s word #1080. The #1080 also occurs at Lk.1:57 & i don’t see how it can possibly mean “beget” or “procreate”. Versions translate it “gave birth” or “brought forth” here:
https://biblehub.com/luke/1-57.htm
If the correct word for “give birth” is τικτω" (tiktō) why wasn’t it used instead? Did Matthew’s author not know that?
Luke 1:57 is translated as if both “τικτω” and “γενναω” means “give birth”:
Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. (ESV)
But if that were the case, why did Luke choose to use two different words for “give birth”?
“γενναω” is derived from a word that means “to generate” or “give rise to” or “cause to come into existence.” So besides using the word to indicate a man “begetting” a child or procreating a child, the word is sometimes used to mean “brought a child into existence”. But it never means “to give birth”. The word “τικτω” is always used when “give birth” is meant.
Could Matthew 2:1 and 4 be other verses, besides Luke 1:57, that are problematic for the view that in Mt.26:24 “γενναω” should not be translated “born” - as practically 100% of versions appear to do - but that it should be rendered “begotten (or generated or conceived)”?
If Jesus was not “begotten (or generated or conceived)” in Bethlehem of Judea, then how should the word “γενναω” in Mt.2:1 & 2:4 be translated as such:
Matthew 2:1 Now, at Jesus’ being born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, lo! magi from the East came along into Jerusalem, 2 1saying, "Where is He Who is brought forth King of the Jews? For we perceived His star in the East, and we came to worship Him." 3 1Now, hearing of it, King Herod was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 And, gathering all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he ascertained from them where the Christ is born. 5 1Now they say to him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written through the prophet: 6 'And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, Are you in any respect least among the mentors of Judah? For out of you shall come forth the Ruler Who shall shepherd My people Israel.
Had Mary not already concieved well before she went to Bethlehem:
Luke 2:1 Now it occurred in those days, that a decree came out from Caesar Augustus that the entire inhabited earth register." 2 This first registration occurred when Quirinius is governing Syria. 3 And all went to register, each into his own city." 4 Now Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, into the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because of his being of the house and kindred of David, 5 to register together with Miriam, his espoused wife, who is parturient.