Persuade, Persuasion
Persuade, Persuasion
per-swad, per-swaz-hun: (1) In the older English persuade need not mean convince (although this is its usual sense in the King James Version: Mat 27:20, etc.), but may mean only attempt to convince, argue with. This is well brought out in Act 26:28, where the Greek is literally In little thou ‘persuadest’ , petheis to make me a Christian. the King James Version took peitheis as convince (almost thou persuadest me …), but this is impossible, and so the Revised Version (British and American) rendered peitheis by thou wouldest fain. To keep something of the language of the King James Version, persuasion was supplied after little, but it should have been italicized, for it is merely conjectural, as the American Revised Version margin recognizes by giving time as an alternative for persuasion. The text of the passage, however, is suspected. See ALMOST. Similarly in Act 13:43, the Revised Version (British and American) replaces persuade by urge, and the same change should have been made also in 2Ki 18:32 and its parallels. (2) The popular persuasions of 1 Esdras 5:73 are efforts to persuade the people (uncertain text, however). Act 19:8 the King James Version writes persuading the things (the Revised Version (British and American) as to the things) for present the things persuasively. And in Gal 1:10 (the English Revised Version and the King James Version, not in the American Standard Revised Version) and 2Co 5:11, there is a half-ironic force in the word: Paul’s enemies have accused him of using unworthy persuasion in making his conversions.