Haplotes

ἁπλότης haplotes

simplicity, sincerity, purity of mind, Romans 12:8 (ἁπλότητι, simplicity); Ephesians 6:5 (ἁπλότητι, singleness); Colossians 3:22 (ἁπλότητι, singleness); liberality, as arising from simplicity and frankness of character, 2 Corinthians 1:12 (ἁπλότητι, simplicity); 8:2 (ἁπλότητος, liberality); 9:11 (ἁπλότης, bountifulness), 9:13 (ἁπλότητι, liberal); 11:3 (ἁπλότητος, simplicity).

Meanings: singleness, simplicity, sincerity, mental honesty; the virtue of one who is free from pretense and hypocrisy; not self seeking, openness of heart manifesting itself by generosity.

“Something for you Greek professors to take note of here, consider the Greek word ‘Happilotese’. There are five different places in the Bible that Greek word is used, so we are told. All five places it is translated a different word. It is translated bountifulness, liberal, liberality, simplicity, and singleness. In II Corinthians 9:11 the King James translators put bountifulness. You look that up in your Greek lexicon, you are going to get all kinds of different definitions. How do you know which one is right? See, you don’t have God directing you to translate the Bible like they did, nor do you have the understanding of languages as they did. You can’t get the context of the Greek like they did to give us the perfect word of God. You may say, ‘Well I go to the Greek to get a deeper meaning.’ Do you mean coming up with different words than the translators, is that the deeper meaning of which you speak? Which one of those definitions is the real one in that verse? See, it is futile; you can’t do it. You will never do it. People who dig into the Greek always get something different than the translators got. Have you ever noticed that? I think I will stick to the King James Bible.” -- Dan Goodwin, Hath God Said?, page 85

Should we accept the putting forth of poor arguments if they come from a person in a position of authority? I hope not. 

I believe there is a good point garbled up within the paragraph, but too cumbersome to be clear. Many people go to the Greek and get it wrong for one reason or another, in such a case as haplotes, not realizing that (like most words) it has some range of meaning according to its context. (On the other hand, I think some of the English uses are synonymous.) Moving away from this example to something more generic. How often does someone look up in a concordance or lexicon and see that X (Greek word) is translated as Y (English word) 25 times. Then they may wrongly assume that when X is translated as Z that the translation is wrong. However, the translators rather are aware of a range of meaning that shows X should be translated as Z in certain contexts. In such a case, the Greek (or perhaps more aptly, thinking one knows more about the Greek than one does) has led the reader astray.