Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"Are convinced of the law as transgressors" (James 2:9) sounds like the law merely persuaded someone of an opinion.
"Convinced" in 1611 meant "convicted" (found guilty by the law), not simply talked into an opinion.
James 2:9, in every translation this tool compares.
James is saying that showing favoritism makes a person guilty under the law, which "accuses, charges, proves, and convicts" them of sin. Modern translations render this straightforwardly as "convicted."
"Convince" in Jacobean English still carried this legal, evidentiary weight of proving a charge against someone, close to "convict": the softer modern sense of merely persuading someone's opinion hadn't fully taken over yet. The same archaic sense shows up in Titus 1:9, where elders are to "convince the gainsayers," meaning refute their objections, not win them over gently.
