Q
Give me your opinion about the Greek dictionary authored by Spiros Zodhiates.

A
Mail-order Th.D.’s do not disqualify a person from teaching the bible. What does disqualify someone is exegesis that has been too influenced by:

1. Use of a corrupt Greek text.
2. The application of faulty principles of textual criticism.
3. Dependence on modern Greek and not Koine Greek.

I think Dr. Zodhiates books are guilty of those three problems. Mutual friends speak highly of Dr. Zodhiates’ tender heart, so he may well be like Paul who said, “I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly” (1 Tim. 1:13). Christians should not put men on pedestals. Ephesians 5:1 says, “Be ye therefore followers of God.” Psalm 118: 8 says, “It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.” Moving a magnifying glass toward mankind, myself included, brings into view mountains of sin and mounds of filthy rags—our righteousness.” Magnify the LORD said the Psalmist.

As a former Roman Catholic, I worshipped dead saints. Born-again Christians tend to worship live saints. First Kings 13 reveals the death of a man of God at the jaws of a lion because he followed the advice of an “old prophet” contrary to the word of God. The “old prophets” “hunt the prey for the lion” yet today (Job 38:39).

The idea of correcting the bible, using a Greek dictionary or a Greek reference work, denies the doctrine of the pure preservation of scriptures. Second Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God.” We know the originals were inspired. Psalm 12:6-7 says, “The words of the Lord are pure words... Thou shalt keep them, 0 Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever” (emphasis mine). God promised to preserve his word in a pure form. The originals were pure and inspired; he promised to preserve it, and so it is still pure and it is still inspired, according to Psalm 12:6-7 (KJV).

We know the original paper is long gone. In Jeremiah 51:63, God commanded Jeremiah to throw his originals in the river, so we know that God is not concerned with the originals. The promise of pure and perfect preservation extends to every word, not to the paper upon which they were written.

Genesis 1:1.says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” That is a very, very powerful God. But if God says, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35) — what great care and power he must extend to those words.

Correcting the “word of God” with the words of men (Greek dictionaries) brings dishonor to our heavenly Father and his authority. Small wonder God’s children do not “tremble at his word.” His bride continually corrects him in their presence with “a better reading would be...” or “the word should have been translated....” The Berean call was to “search the scriptures daily,” not correct them. When the bible refers to “scriptures,” as it does here in Acts 17:11, the reference is to copies, not original manuscripts. Consider 2 Timothy 3:15, “From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures.” Neither he nor the Ethiopian eunuch, who also read “the scriptures” had the eight hundred-year-old originals of the book of Isaiah. If “the word” is a Greek text only, then only the Greek-speaking churches could “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2) and only those fluent in Greek could be “born again by the word.” Acts 2:6 says, “Every man heard them speak in his own language.” I do not think that God is in the business of deceiving house-wives who do not have access to a library of Greek reference books. (First Corinthians 6:4 reminds us to “set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.”) We can have confidence that “every word” in the King James Bible is the pure word of God.