Here is one example of the replies I had been planning to send to the twenty-seven observations on your list. In fact it’s the only one that I got as far as writing out at full length, since the information I discovered about this one turned out to be both exceptionally abundant and exceptionally interesting.
In your post #496 on this thread you wrote:
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#27. Galatians 5:12 — “Cut off” is changed to “emasculate themselves,” turning exclusion into bodily mutilation.
The KJV says:
“I would they were even cut off which trouble you.”
The ESV says:
“I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!”
The Greek word
ἀποκόψονται, from
ἀποκόπτω, has the broader meaning
“to cut off” or “cut away.” Older Greek-Latin lexical evidence glosses
ἀποκόπτω with Latin
amputo.
Importantly,
Lewis & Short does not define amputo as “castrate.” It gives the broader senses
“to cut around, cut away or off, lop off, prune.” The older lexical evidence therefore does not require the specific meaning of self-castration.
In context, I understand Paul to be wishing that these false teachers would be
cut off from the fellowship of the believers they were troubling, not that they would physically mutilate themselves.
Greek even has the more explicit verb
εὐνουχίζω, meaning
“to make a eunuch,” which appears in
Matthew 19:12. Paul does not use that word here.
The ESV therefore takes a particular interpretation and puts the graphic idea of self-castration directly into Paul’s mouth. This also creates an unnecessary apparent conflict with Christ’s commands to
love our enemies and pray for those who mistreat and persecute us. The KJV’s
“cut off” preserves the actual breadth of the Greek and naturally allows the sense of being
cut off from fellowship, rather than making Paul wish bodily mutilation upon his opponents.
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@Bible_Highlighter, in Wigram’s concordance we see that this verb
ἀποκόπτω (apokopto) occurs in other NT books as well, including the gospels of Mark and John. In Mark 9:43,45 it’s seen in a much-quoted saying of Jesus, “And if thy hand/ foot offend tbee, cut it off.” In John 18:10, when Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter cuts off the servant’s ear.
I trust you find Wigram an acceptable source. He was one of the founding members of the Plymouth Brethren and his concordance first appeared in either 1840 or 1841, forty years before Westcott and Hort published their revised GNT.
In secular literature, too, the primary meaning of
ἀποκόπτω is to cut off (a limb), characteristically in battle. From Liddell & Scott we learn (p. 185a, link below) that in the first and second centuries AD some writers used the term to denote castration.
One of these writers, significantly, is Philo, a Greek-speaking Jewish writer from Alexandria who was an older contemporary of both Jesus and Paul: he lived from approx. 20 BC to approx. AD 50. We need to bear in mind that koine Greek did not exist in a single, Empire-wide standard form. On the contrary, present-day academics habitually assign at least an approximate place and date of composition on the basis of known variations in spelling, in vocabulary, and even in syntax.
ἀπόκοπος
A few entries up from
ἀποκόπτω on the same page in the lexicon, we find the related adjective
ἀπόκοπος (apokopos), which has the primary meaning “castrated.” Is any of these words in the
ἀποκόπτω family ever found in the sense of breaking off a friendship or “canceling” someone who has come to be seen as an undesirable associate? To judge from what we read here in Liddell & Scott, the answer would seem to be No. However, I have made no attempt to dig any deeper on this point. Maybe you know of something that I don’t. If so, please let me know!
It seems pretty clear to me that in this verse in Galatians Paul really does mean castration though, as you point out, we need to explain why he didn’t use
εὐνουχίζω (eunouchilo) instead. His reason, I would suggest, was probably the wish to use a milder, less explicit term, so as not to offend the sensibilities of the congregations in Galatia and elsewhere where his letter was to be read aloud in the local synagogues.
Fifteen centuries later, a similar consideration seems to have been at work in the case of the KJV. Among the king’s instructions to his translators, we read:
4. When any word hath divers significations, that to be kept which hath been most commonly used by the most eminent fathers, being agreeable to the propriety of the place and the analogies of faith.
A later addition to his list demonstrates the importance the king attached to ensuring “the propriety of the place”:
15. Three or four of the most ancient and grave divines, in either of the universities, not employed in translating, to be assigned to be overseers of the translation, for the better observation of the fourth rule.
Link to Liddell & Scott, pp. 184-185:
https://archive.org/details/greekenglishlex00lidduoft/page/184/mode/2up
