The course has 3 basic requirements
- Payment at the start of the course unless other arrangements are agreed upon.
- Regular class attendance and participation are required. Class participation means both answering questions and making relevant comments in the context of our in-class discussion. Roll is taken every class session; if you are not present during the taking of attendance, you will still be required to pay for that day’s class, unless extreme circumstances apply and agreed upon beforehand.
- Be counted absent unless you speak with Patricia before that session. If you are absent 3 (three) or more classes certificate is withheld until work is completed.
Completion of the primary and secondary readings prior to class goes hand in hand with class participation and thus is as important. Students are expected to bring any and all readings to class on the days scheduled for discussion.
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- To be awarded a Certificate of Distinction, full class participation is required. High Distinction awards require students to write two essays x 250 words each. Each student is required to meet with me at an agreed-upon time to discuss these proposals.
- The KJV is used as a primary source in studies of the Old Testament
- The Source New Testament: with Extensive Notes Dr A. Nyland is used as a primary source in studies in the NT. It contains extensive notes on word meaning with documentary attestations and separate verse numbers. It is available to purchase available through the RWVM website.
Dr Nyland writes…
Taken from Extensive notes on the meanings of the Greek words can be found in The Source New Testament: with Extensive Notes on Word Meaning.
‘To consider the biological gender in each verse studied following the Greek text. For example, the Greek word meaning all people by the English word “humanity”.
The Greek word for a human being, means a person of either gender, by the English word “person” rather than “man” or “mankind”. this is a preference within the English language and has nothing to do with the original Greek
Further, the Greek word ‘adelphoi’ is usually translated as “brothers” in most Bible versions. However, this word refers to both genders and has a range of meanings. It can mean “fellow believer”, “member of an association”, “associate”, or “siblings” (“brothers and sisters”). To say a translation that has “brother and sister” has added the word “sister” is a basic error, for the Greek word actually means “sibling”.In fact, in the Bible, the word mostly occurs in its meaning “fellow believer”. A single word in one language often needs to be translated by several words in another language.
I have chosen to translate rather than transliterate many words, not following the usual tradition of Bible translation. “Transliteration” is the putting of Greek letters into the English language, and “translation” is the rendering of their meaning into the English language. For example, “Angel” results from putting Greek letters into English letters, but the actual translation is “Messenger”. In the same way, the word “Satan” is the transliteration, but “Adversary” is the meaning, the translation.
I have used “they” as the third person generic singular rather than “he or she”. This is now accepted English language usage,
For centuries, the meanings of numerous New Testament words remained unknown, and translators simply made educated guesses. In the late 1880s and again in the mid-1970s, large amounts of papyri written in New Testament times were discovered. (No, these were nothing to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls!) These impacted our knowledge of word meaning in the New Testament to such a degree that scholars labelled the finds “sensational” and “dramatic.” Words found in the New Testament now appeared commonly in everyday private letters from ordinary people, contracts of marriage and divorce, tax papers, official decrees, birth and death notices, and business documents. Many mysteries of word meaning were solved.
However, nearly every New Testament translation of today follows the traditional translations of words of the earlier versions. These were published centuries before the evidence from the papyri and inscriptions revealed to us the meanings of numerous New Testament words.
Theological bias can influence Bible translators to err from translating correctly. For example, the straightforward Greek sentence of 1 Cor. 11:10 which simply states that a woman ought to show her own authority on her head has been completely altered in most Bible versions to state that a woman must wear a covering (the word “veil” does not appear in the Greek) to show she is under a man’s authority. The Greek sentence does not mention a man or husband.
The King James Version changed the female names Junia and Nympha to masculine names, reversed the order of “mother and brothers”, reversed the order of Priscilla (woman) and Aquila (man) when the couple was presented in a teaching context, and added the words “a man” to a sentence about a woman being in a position of responsibility. It is then not surprising that their social context, that is, the way in which women were viewed in their culture, impacted upon the way they chose to translate. Of course, this applies to bias in all areas and not only to those passages about women.
The translations of most New Testament versions are based to a large degree on the mistranslation of Greek word meanings. Most available translations do not regard the abundant evidence for word meaning supplied in recent years by the papyri and inscriptions; thus in many cases present a far from accurate translation of the New Testament.’
Dr A. Nyland: taken from Introduction, The Source New Testament with Extensive Notes