Yesterday in a very different web-based context, I came across a recordig of a very long sermon that ought to have interested me because it related to what I will be speaking about this Sunday.  I couldn't get past the first five minutes or so because the exegesis, which was very authoritatively delivered, seemed so incredibly iffy! 

The speaker boldly asserted that the reference to 'little children' in the gospels meant 'infants' or 'babies', which is inaccurate, at least so far as any Greek I can find suggests.  'Paidon ' can mean child (and clearly does in context) but can also mean a 'slave/servant boy/girl' or even, ahem, a 'boy' whose role was to satisify an older male.  The translator's choice to render this as 'little child/children' is probably defennsible, given the use of the word 'mikron' (small, little, wee) in the wider context, but it sure isn't 'baby' or 'infant'. At no point does the Greek have either the narrator or Jesus saying 'little child/children', it is always either 'child/children' or 'little ones'.  Tsk, translators!!

Then, today as I've allowed my mind to ruminate, I found myself recalling the Pauline concenr with the need to 'put away childish things'... which is not what the Greek says either.  The word 'nepios' used in 1 Corinthians 13 means... (according to my interlinear anyway) infant.  So, rather than contradicting (or seeming to) Jesus, what Paul is eschewing is an infantilised faith.  Which is something very different indeed.

So that has given me much to ponder and play around with between now and the final version of whatever I end up writing!  And it all goes to prove that those Greek classes through which I laboured weren't entirely wasted!!