gtucty Ambition
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» ¿¿5 Note- —Sermon preached at Montrose, Pa., on August 26, 1917, from the text: “Be Ambitious. —1 Thessalonians 4:11. Revised Version Margin.
j l |||N 1 Thessalonians 4:11, Paul A/“ admonished the men of his day to “be ambitious,” but the translators of the Eng- lish Bible have never had the
get votes. That is they were ambitious to get votes. It is very interesting to ask why this word has not been used to translate the Greek word “Philotimeisthai,” used in the text. The Revisors admit in the margin that it means to -“be ambitious.” If that is the Greek, why did they not put it in the text? They were apparently afraid of it, for it is a word with a bad reputa tion. Words as well ns men and women sometimes get a bad reputation and are usually injured by it. The English of the King James Version was influenced by Shakespeare more than by any other man of that time. He gave this word “ambi tion” a setting and reputation which was wholly unjust and from which it has never recovered. He took the thing represented by it as Illustrated in one of the outstand ing characters of his day, and through a very grave misinterpretation called it “Thou Scarlet Sin.” Ever since that day the word has been looked upon with more or less suspicion.
courage to literally translate that great word. So far as I know the word “ambi tion,” or its cognate, does not appear in the English text of the Bible. It appears at least three times in the margin of the American Revised Version: In Romans 15:20; 2 Cor. 5 :9, and in. this admonition to the Thessalonians. The Greek word used in these three instances, and so far as I know these are the only places in which it is used in the Scriptures, is com posed of two words: “Philos,” which lit erally means “friendly;” and “Timeo,” which means to set a price upon, or to evaluafte. Therefore the word literally means to set a value upon a thing and be friendly towards it, and is the word used by the Greeks for ambition. Our word ambition is a Latin word and means “to go about.” The politicians went about to
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