2 Comments

  1. Mark Stephan

    Thanks for the comment Steve. Certainly the word for ‘Son’ should not only mean sexual relation produced offspring. However, in the translations being discussed, and affirmed by the WEA panel who evaluated the policies and translations of Wycliffe, it was brought out that in all cases given, the word used for Son was, like in the english word for son, had many layered meanings. For example Arabic, which is one of the words discussed, Son can mean biological, just like in english. However ‘son’ can also mean from the same essence, or branched off of as in the example a ‘son’ of a river, which would be in English tributary. Arabic has many such instances where son does not mean biological offspring, and thus the argument given that in Arabic the word Son can only mean biological offspring through sexual relations is false.

    When Wycliffe was asked if they have any such language where they believe it is the case that the word ‘son’ only means a sexually conceived offspring, we were answered with silence. They argue that there is such a theoretical language possible. Our argument is, we aren’t talking about theoretical languages, we’re talking about real ones that they did replace the appropriate word ‘Son’ with something less appropriate, and divergent in meaning.

  2. Steve Cook

    Translating ‘son(s) of God’ meaningfully has nothing whatsoever to do with theological objections that Muslims might have to Biblical doctrine; the sole objective is to communicate the original meanings of the phrase as well as possible and to avoid communicating the wrong meaning, namely God’s biological offspring.

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