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.
"Ye allow the deeds of your fathers" means the religious leaders merely tolerated or permitted what their fathers did
"Allow" meant approve of or endorse, much stronger than today's sense of "permit."
Luke 11:48, in every translation this tool compares.
In Luke 11:48, Jesus tells the lawyers, "ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres." This isn't a mild accusation of looking the other way; Jesus is charging them with actively endorsing and approving the murder of the prophets, evidenced by the monuments they build. Root Latin senses behind "allow" carried ideas of praising and crediting, giving it a much stronger, approving force in 1611 English than "permit" does today.
Modern "allow" has weakened to mean simple permission, letting something happen without necessarily agreeing with it, so readers can miss that this is one of the sharper accusations in the passage, not a soft one.
