Faithful readers, accept my heartfelt thanks for your interaction. I really do appreciate it. I’m actually glad my blog is not popular enough to attract nasty commenters!
For those who didn’t participate in the “peruse” discussion, check out how the discussion fared at the polling page.
A Christian friend who struggles with doubt recently wrote me asking why I chose the name of long-time blog, byfaithweunderstand.com. Today I was thinking again about those four words “by faith we understand” and I feel a physical reaction to it. It’s hard to swallow...
A story in pictures. Because this new ESV Bible—the ESV Heirloom Single Column Personal Size Bible—needs only a one-word review: exquisite. Bloggers write words when none are needed, however, because the word-count of the internet is not yet full—so I will oblige with...
I come to the Trinitarian Bible Society’s two-part, 38,000-word “Examination of the New King James Version,” written by Albert Hembd, with a question. The question is precise and direct: Will the author ever mention a specific passage in which the NKJV translators...
A young aspiring pastor recently asked other pastors in a Facebook group what kinds of doubts they’ve had about Christianity, and what they’ve done with those doubts. I replied… I went through a several-month period of doubt during my senior year as a Bible major at...
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Though I’m late coming into the conversation, here goes. I am grieved to think that if peruse looses the meaning “to read carefully,” English will have lost one of its crisper words. “Read this document carefully” is more clumsy than “Peruse this document.” But, the final word is usage. Are there any reasons for prescribing lexicographically? 🙂
That was a very good comment. I’m glad you posted it. In my heart I feel the way you do. I think “comprise” and “compose” provide a good example. There’s a useful distinction we’re losing.
But right now I fear more the opposite danger, that people will continue to live in the dark land of LP and have their Bible interpretation darkened by the darkness in that dark land!
English is beautiful—”supple,” as someone put it once. It would be a shame for it to go down the tubes. Strike that. Reverse it. It _is_ a shame. But the answer can’t be staking claims on individual words. That won’t work anyway. It has to be creating a culture in which words are valued and savored. So the best way to preserve “peruse” is probably to get rid of television and text messaging.
Or, seriously, to see a work of the Spirit of God in either saving or re-moralizing our culture. May God do that by His grace!