Lately I have been studying in 1 Peter. What a wonderful book on expounding the troubles we have from living a Godly life.
When studying Scripture, you often run into textual problems that need to be considered. Most of the time, the evidence is overwhelming for a particular reading, which makes it easy to be confident in the translation; however, there are also times when you run into translation problem. Translation problems tend to cause a lot more problems with people's beliefs because everyone sees them, but unless you are looking at the Greek, you cannot tell there is a problem. One such problem can be found in 1 Peter 1:1. In the three major translations used today (KJV, NASB, NIV) the word "elect" is put in the wrong place. This is not a textual problem it is a translation problem.
In the Greek, 1 Peter 1:1 and 2 read "Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ to the elect strangers of the dispersion according to the foreknowledge of God Father of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia in the sanctification of the Spirit because of obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, may grace and peace be caused to increase to you." However, in each one of the translations I mentioned the word "elect" is moved down the sentence and the foreknowledge of God is applied to it. The NIV even adds an extra "elect" that is not in the original text to ensure their readers apply elect to foreknowledge.
Why the problems? There is no textual problem with elect and its position in the sentence; grammatically it is impossible to apply foreknowledge to elect. (Elect is an adjective for strangers. Foreknowledge is in a prepositional clause that modifies dispersion.) The problem is not the text, rather the theology of the ones who translated it and those who decided to follow the translation rather than the grammar.
Are we elect or are we elect by the foreknowledge of God?
