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modern English means to hinder or stop. In what sense can living believers stop or
hinder those believers who have died?
We read in Mark 1: 30 "But Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever, and anon they
tell Him of her". We might be pardoned for deducting from this that the disciples waited
a while before telling the Lord of this illness. But Mark wrote eutheos, immediately, just
the opposite of this. A similar context is Matt. 13: 20, 21 where the A.V. again uses
`anon' for euthus reading,
"But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word,
and anon with joy receiveth it; yet he hath not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for
when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended."
The natural meaning of these words today is that when persecution arises because of
the Word, later on some are offended, but this again is exactly opposite to what Matthew
was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write, for again he uses euthus, immediately, teaching
that such offence follows straight away during and after persecution. There is no interval
between the two.
The A.V. renders exautes also as `by and by' in Mark 6: 25 where the daughter of
Herodias asks Herod for the head of John the Baptist. She said "I will that thou give me
by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist". She was not asking to received this
some time later, but immediately as exautes means.
Again in Deut. 22: 18, 19 we read "and the elders of that city shall take that man
and chastise him; and they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver . . . . .".
What does "amerce" mean in modern English? It is possible that not one in a hundred
people would know.
It should be clear from these examples (and there are many more) that if we are to get
anything like an exact rendering in English of what the Holy Spirit wrote in Hebrew and
Greek through the instrumentality of men nearly 2000 years ago, we need some of these
archaic and obsolete words expressed in contemporary language, or else we are going to
lose truth and this would be tragic indeed, for as we have seen above, the old English of
1611 is sometimes opposite to the truth of the original inspired Scriptures through the
change of language. In practically every case the difficulty has arisen through the change
of meaning of words and nothing can prevent this happening, for it is constantly going on
in all languages. Not only this, but the development of the study of the Holy Scriptures,
the discovery of important ancient manuscripts since 1611, and the new knowledge of
Bible lands and languages afforded by archaeology, have made up-to-date translations
necessary as companions to the A.V., although by no means supplanting it. We should
constantly praise the Lord for all the valuable evidence that, under His guidance we
believe, has been dug up from the soil of the Middle East, confirming the truth of His
Word and throwing a flood of light on the meaning of koine Greek in which the Holy
Spirit chose to write the N.T. Much of this information was denied to the translators of
our English Bible, for it was discovered since their day. That they would have used this
further knowledge had it been possible, there is no doubt, for in their Introduction,