tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post113397116214553258..comments2023-10-20T07:28:50.948-07:00Comments on Better Bibles Blog: Luke 2:16 How many were in the manger?Wayne Lemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18024771201561767893noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post-1134585449961905132005-12-14T10:37:00.000-08:002005-12-14T10:37:00.000-08:00I don't see the ambiguity. Someone who doesn't kno...I don't see the ambiguity. Someone who doesn't know proper punctuation might misinterpret the sentence as ambiguous, and perhaps someone hearin it spoken if it's not accented properly might think so, but the sentence as it stands is not ambiguous. It cannot mean that all three were lying in the manger. The sentence as it stands is:<BR/><BR/>So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.<BR/><BR/>If it were as follows, it would be ambiguous:<BR/><BR/>So they went with haste and found Mary, Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.<BR/><BR/>In the second version, 'lying in the manger' could modify 'the child', or it could modify the whole noun phrase. In the first version, it can't. The ungrammatical comma in the first version separates 'Mary and Joseph' from the phrase 'the child lying in the manger'. I don't see how someone who looks at how it's punctuated could take it the way you suggest is possible. It's still wrong to put a comma between two parts of a noun phrase the way they did, but I don't think it's ambiguous.Jeremy Piercehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03441308872350317672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post-1134008992670392342005-12-07T18:29:00.000-08:002005-12-07T18:29:00.000-08:00I used to use this verse to make my youth group th...I used to use this verse to make my youth group think. We'd play with various ways of thinking of it.<BR/><BR/>Nice to know that the Greek was unambiguous.Joehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09693381971064363612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post-1133983227228119882005-12-07T11:20:00.000-08:002005-12-07T11:20:00.000-08:00What I thought was farther off. I thought the man...What I thought was farther off. I thought the manger was the structure, not the "bed". I think most Christians have the same mistaken belief. Folks selling "manger scenes" don't help.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17667550997520673156noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11875966.post-1133980229861626132005-12-07T10:30:00.000-08:002005-12-07T10:30:00.000-08:00The choice between "feed trough" and "manger" is a...The choice between "feed trough" and "manger" is also pretty interesting and better conveys Luke's point. For years as a kid, I thought that a manger was some primitive kind of baby furniture that used straw instead of cushions that happened to found in barns, or something like that.Stephen C. Carlsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18239379955876245197noreply@blogger.com