Rhetoric Race and Religion
Ask most people what happens to prophecies in the Bible, and the response will be that they get fulfilled. But that popular answer is based on a fundamental translation mistake. The Bible doesn’t say that prophecies come true. Here’s what led to that widespread misunderstanding.
Greek has a verb plerow, commonly pronounced “play-ROH-oh.” It primarily means “fill,” and appears throughout the Bible. Romans 15:13, for example, reads, “May the God of hope fill [plerow] you with all joy.” In Matthew 13:48, the word refers to a dragnet that is “full” of fish. And so on.
This look at the context of plerow is helpful, because context is the best way to figure out what an ancient word means, as I explain in And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, and as I summarize here.
Because the English word “fulfill” contains the word “fill,” translators wrongly thought that the Greek word plerow could mean “fulfill” in addition to “fill.” But language doesn’t work that way.
Just as “supplant” in English is different than “plant,” and “supply” is different than “ply,”plerow doesn’t jump in meaning from “fill” to “fulfill.” These pairs only have superficial similarities in common, and looking at internal structure in this way leads people astray. (Read more about why.)
Read the rest here
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