Limne refers to a Body of Water

This is a follow up of sorts to the post on my main theology Blog about how The Lake of Fire is the Baptism of Fire, which was also relevant on this Blog to the Baptism of The Beast.

A fellow believer in Universal Salvation on YouTube who’s channel is titled Total Victory of Christ has made a big deal of arguing that Lake is an inaccurate translation of Limne, and in terms of what the word Lake implies about size to a modern English reader he may be correct.  However the word definitely inherently refers to a Body of Water.

Its number in the Strongs Concordance is G3041 and the only other NT author to use it is Luke where it’s always tied to the Lake of Galilee.  His theory that this refers to a specific Harbor rather than the Sea as a whole seemed plausible to me at first, but Luke 8:22-23 is a big problem for that.  But ultimately even if that theory is true it’s still a body of water.. 

Limne appears in the LXX three times, in Psalm 107:35 and 114:8 where it’s used for what the KJV calls Standing Water, and in Song of Songs 7:4 where it’s “Fishpools” in the KJV.  The Hebrew words behind them are different but both are words always used of bodies of water and get translated into English words like “pool” and “pond”.

Luke also uses the closely related word Limen G3040 in Acts 27:8-12 for harbors on Crete which the KJV translates Haven. Limen’s one appearance is the LXX was in Psalm 107:30 which is also Haven in the KJV. 

I agree that the metal refining imagery of Isaiah 48:10, Zechariah 13:9, Malachi 3:2-3 and Proverbs 17:3 & 27:21 has a role to play in understanding The Lake of Fire, but we can’t use symbolism to justify a translation decision when we know there were actual Greek words for refining pot or crucible that John could have used.  

In response to the argument that no one translated it “lake” before Tyndale, well no one wrote a Modern English Bible before Tyndale so there’s a lot of words no Bibles used before him.  But the Vulgate uses stagnum which means pool or pond so still a body of water. Researching what exactly was used in the Wycliffe Bible isn’t proving easy but it seems he too used Middle English synonyms for pond or pool.

The Greek word Baptize means to immerse or wash typically in water.  So I believe a word for a body of water is used here to guide readers to conclude this is the Baptism of Fire spoken of by John The Baptist.  It’s conveying the idea of Baptism without using the word.

Now I could likewise try to translate the verse in a way that would bias readers towards my interpretation by rendering it Baptistry or Mikveh to appeal to the Hebrew Roots people, but I’ve ultimately decided not to.  

My only issue with Pool is there is a different Greek word translated Poot in the KJV used in John 5 for the Pool of Bethesda and John 9 for the Pool of Siloam. That word has an etymology that could more specifically be translated Siwmingpool, though both these Pools were notably used for ritual bathing.  These two words do seem synonymous enough to justify translating into the same English word. 

However the traditional view that the 4th Gospel and The Apocalypse have the same author makes it hard for some to accept they’re using different words for the same kind of thing.  However I’ve become convinced that the Beloved Disciple can’t be a son of Zebede and is either Lazarus or his sister Mary Magdalene. Using Limne over Kolumbertha isn’t the only way I’ve observed Revelation to be more inline with Luke then the 4th Gospel in terms of vocabulary.

The size of this body of water isn’t the reason infernalists think these passages support them, lots of people being in it clearly makes it larger than a normal “refining pot”.  You could translate it as Lake or Sea or Ocean it doesn’t matter, what matters is getting people to understand that the fire is God’s Purging Fire.

So the more I think about it the more I come back to thinking Tyndale had it right.  Lake is perfectly fine.  God is using this Lake as a giant refining pot.