The English Word Apologetics is a transliteration, not a translation, of the Greek legal term apologia1 (ἀπολογία), which was used to describe a rational defense of one’s position in a court of law.2 In the Greek world a similar word, “dialegomenos, ‘to argue,’ was used of Greek logicians and philosophers.”3 (The NASB renders this word “reasoning” in Acts 18:4, 19; and 19:9.) In the Greek court system
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