The Dividing Line, September 23, 2008

And welcome back to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning. Let's go ahead and take our phone call that's been waiting patiently for, well, most of the time we've been on the air. Let's talk with Mike.

Hi Mike, how you doing? Hello Mike. Hello Dr. White.

Granville Sharp’s Rule and Titus 2:13

How are you sir? I am doing very good. Quick question, I'll try to be brief. I've been debating a JW at work. I used Titus Chapter 2, Granville Sharpe's rule. Now what he pointed out after reading the rule was that the rule does not work if either nouns or pronouns.

And since Theos had my own thought, I'm confused.

Are you saying pronoun or proper noun? I'm sorry, proper noun, forgive me. Okay, okay. Well, actually the rule states that that's in regards to names, not proper nouns. That would be the first thing. And the article would not indicate that one way or the other.

An article does not indicate proper noun. An article just indicates whether it's articular or not. You can have proper nouns, even names can have articles in Greek. So that doesn't follow. Everyone, all Greek grammarians recognize that Titus 2 .13 is a Granville Sharpe construction.

That's not an issue. My book The Forgotten Trinity has a chapter that deals with this. And so I would recommend that to you. I'd also recommend to you the section in Daniel Wallace's Second Year Grammar.

He has, I think, somewhere around 80 pages on the subject of the Greek article. And he has done extensive work in the Granville Sharpe constructions. And so I would recommend that to you. But just to try to make it understandable to you, I would present both Titus 2 .13 and 2 Peter 1 .1 as my primary texts.

And both of them have contextual demonstration that the proper translation is God and Savior. In Titus 2 .13, the very fact that theos, actually it's theos, it's an adjective, has the article to in front of it is necessary for a Granville Sharpe construction to exist.

It's soteros that does not. So it's the first the first noun has the article. The second one does not. They're connected by chi. Hence, they're both referring to Jesus Christ. If he says that the article somehow makes something a proper noun, proper nouns don't fit.

He doesn't understand what the what the what the rule is actually stating. And he would basically say that no proper nouns could ever be used in a Granville Sharpe construction because obviously in any Granville Sharpe construction, the first noun has to have the article anyways.

So he would be, by definition, getting rid of all Granville Sharpe constructions if his understanding was correct. But there's two other things to recognize. The context of Titus 2 is extremely strong.

I can't go through it right now, but if you would look at the if you like a good reference Bible that will give you the background terms in Titus 2 .14, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness, to purify for himself people for his own possession, who are zealous for good deeds.

Psalm 130, verse eight, for example, the same terminology is used of Yahweh. In fact, you can trace verse 14 verbiage all through the Old Testament, all in reference to Yahweh. And what I would point out is that there is no switching of persons back and forth in Titus 2, 12, 13, 14.

There's only one person in view. He has to be inserting somebody in view that is never mentioned in the text because he has to make a distinction between Jesus and whoever he views God as Yahweh or something like that.

And yet it's clearly talking about Jesus Christ in the terms of Yahweh in Titus 2 .14. So you have contextual argumentation to make in that one. Then I would go to 2 Peter, and this one will help you.

Does he use the New World Translation? One more time, please. Does he use the New World Translation? Yes, he does. Okay, take him to 2 Peter 1 .1 and have him read 2 Peter 1 .1 in the New World Translation.

The end of the verse is going to say, in a good translation, it's going to say, "...of the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.". He's going to say, "...of our God and of our Savior Jesus Christ.".

Now, if he has what's called the Kingdom Interlinear Translation, it used to be a purple-bound book, now it's a blue-bound book. It was more fun when it was purple because we call it the Purple People-Eater, but now it's blue and it's just sort of boring.

But anyway, if he has the Kingdom Interlinear Translation, have him look at it and then say, okay, so you're saying that this doesn't work, that this should be our God and our Savior. Well, if that's the case, then look down at verse 11 in the New World Translation, and that one reads, "...for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.".

You can put the Greek of God and Savior Jesus Christ and Lord and Savior Jesus Christ right next to each other, right out of the Kingdom Interlinear Translation, and they are absolutely identical. The only difference is Lord instead of God.

But grammatically, everything else, word order, everything is identical. The New World Translation will correctly translate the Granville-Sharp Construction and 2 Peter 1 .11, but it won't correctly translate the Granville-Sharp Construction and 2 Peter 1 .1.

And the reason is not in the language, it is in their theology, completely and totally. In fact, there are two more Granville-Sharp Constructions in 2 Peter, and the New World Translation translates every single one of them correctly except for 2 Peter 1 .1.

And you can demonstrate that they're parallel in the original language. Therefore, the only reason that they would make the distinction they do is because of their overriding theology. Their theology is not being derived from Scripture, it is being derived from the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, and they then translate Scripture in light of that.

Overriding priority. Okay, thank you very much, White. It's been very helpful. Okay,.

Remember the Forgotten Trinity, and there's also discussion of it in my book, The King James Only Controversy. I'll look into those right away. All right, thanks a lot. Thank you very much. God bless.

Bye-bye.