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Re: Masculine or Feminine?
True all that. You can do word studies on your own.
Look up the Strong's number and see how the author of the passage you're studying uses that word. Then look at how other authors the same genre use that word. Then look at the Testament and how they use that word in that general time period. Then read the passage and the book surrounding the passage to make sure you understand the context and you can almost always figure out the correct meaning according to authorial intent. If there's a conflict then the you give more weight to how the author uses the same word in other places over other authors in the same genre, same genre over other places in the testament. The idea is to understand what the author originally meant when he wrote it to his original audience. So a little background study on the audience may be helpful too. And maybe read the same passage in 5-10 different translations in order to get a feel for how most translators interpreted that word. Don't base your interpretation on a single translator's opinion in a single version.
Clear as mud?
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"Most human beings are not able to stand the message of the shaking of foundations. They reject and attack the prophetic minds, not because they really disagree with them, but because they sense the truth of their words and cannot receive it." Paul Tillich
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