The Ask, N.T.R.Y. Anything, Podcast.

Hello, welcome back to the show. It's Justin Briley, premier's theology and apologetics

editor, bringing you another weekly dose of all things Tom Wright and brought you of course

in partnership with SBCK and NT Wright Online. Today your questions revolve around why did

Jesus have to die and what did his death actually achieve? Always enjoy your feedback as well

to previous editions of the show and a little while back we did a show on parables and Tom

responding to some listener questions on parables. One was about the friend at midnight

parable and there was one particular question that came up and a few people have been in touch

actually to say that they wanted to let Tom know about an alternative way of approaching

this. So Rick Lee for instance gets in touch to say, I heard you and Tom Wright talking

about Luke 11, specifically the friend at midnight parable. You brought up the alternative

translation of the Greek Anidea from verse 8 to preserve the honour of his name, speaking

of the sleeper in the parable. Now Tom seems unfamiliar with this alternative translation.

Thankfully, Reverend Dr Wright has made it clear he's still learning so I hope this

may be a resource for him too. Several years ago I stumbled on this alternative translation

and you've attached kind of resource from an article in Jets by Alan Johnson which

refers to Kenneth Bailey in the footnotes who you also recommend in this topic Rick.

The gist of the issue is that this word, I think I'm pronouncing this right, Anidea

only appears once in scripture right here in Luke 11 verse 8 and this makes it much

harder to translate confidently. It is used hundreds of times in other ancient Greek

literature and that offers some guidance. So Bailey and Johnson both think that the word

rightly understood is aimed at the sleeper, not the petitioner, not the one banging on

...