LandonWillis

Category: Greek

  • What Are The Beatitudes?

    Jesus started His Sermon on the Mount by calling several different groups of people blessed. We typically call this section of his teaching “the beatitudes”.

    But why?

    Well, in Matthew 5:3-11, in our English translations, He starts every sentence with the word “blessed”. In the Latin translation of the New Testament (the Vulgate), the word used is beati.

    From this Latin word, beati, we get the word “beatitude”, which we use to talk about this short passage.

    Well, what does beati mean?

    “Blessed” is certainly a good translation in the context of this passage. But, the more common translation of the Latin word is “happy” or “fortunate”.

    In fact, when the word “beatitude” first entered the English language, it could just mean “supreme happiness”. However, it very quickly developed a purely religious context.

    From beatus (another form of the word beati), we also get the name “Beatrice”. Naming your daughter Beatrice would be like naming your son Felix (felix is another Latin word for “happy”).

    And, even though the Sermon on the Mount was originally written in Greek, it seems that the Greek word used, makarios, could similarly mean “happy” or “blessed”.

  • Eucharist

    “Eucharist” is another name for the Lord’s Supper, also known as Communion.

    It comes from the Greek word eukharistia (εὐχαριστέω), which literally means “thankfulness” or “gratitude”.

    This refers back to what actually happened during the Last Supper (Luke 22:17-19):

    “17 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks (eucharistēsas), He said, “Take this and share it among yourselves…19 And when He had taken some bread and given thanks (eucharistēsas), He broke it and gave it to them, saying…”

    So, the Lord’s Supper is a “giving thanks” meal. And that’s why the term Eucharist is commonly used to describe it.

    Plus, as a fun language tidbit, the modern Greek language gets a word from this. The Greek word Eυχαριστώ (pronounced something like “ef-ha-ree-sto”) means “thank you”.

    If you’re ever in Greece and want to tell someone thank you, just remember the word “Eucharist” and try to say it with a Greek accent. You’ll probably end up with something close to “ef-ha-ree-sto”.

  • Grammatical Error In The KJV?

    In Matthew 16:13, the King James Version reads:

    13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

    This is clearly different from other English translations, such as the NIV:

    13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

    The major difference is that the KJV uses the word “whom”, while every other English translation (including the New King James Version) uses “who”.

    Who vs. Whom

    Now, if you’re like most people, you’ve got no clue when to actually use “whom” in a sentence, and you probably don’t really care.

    So, to give you a really easy way to figure it out, there’s one quick little test you can use.

    If you can restructure the question as a statement, using the word “he”, then the correct word is “who”. And if you can use the word “him”, then “whom” is correct.

    As an example:

    You can look at the sentence “Who said that?”. We can rephrase it as a statement: “He said that.”, so the word “who” is correct in that sentence.

    Then, we can look at the sentence “Whom did he hit?”. We can rephrase that as “He hit him.”, so the word “whom” is correct.

    If you want to get into the fancy grammar terminology, this is because “who” is in the subjective case, and “whom” is in the objective case.

    Whom in the KJV

    So, back to the KJV.

    Let’s apply this quick test we just learned to the translation of Jesus’ question in the KJV.

    “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?”

    First, let’s just drop out the appositive, “Son of man”, to make this sentence a bit easier to handle:

    “Whom do men say that I am?”

    We can restructure this sentence as “Men say that I am he.” (If you’re confused about why it’s correct to say “I am he” but not “I am him”, just trust me on it. It’s due to something called a “predicate adjective”, which has to match the subject in case.)

    Well, according to our test, since “he” works in the sentence but not “him”, we should use the word “who”.

    So, why does the KJV say “whom” when that’s grammatically incorrect?

    Pretty much, in some other languages, including Greek and Latin, there’s something called the “accusative plus the infinitive”. This is a grammar rule that sounds very foreign in English but is entirely normal in Latin and Greek.

    To give you an example of how the “accusative plus the infinitive” works, look at the two following English sentences:

    (normal sentence) “Who do men say that I am?”

    (accusative plus the infinitive) “Whom do men say me to be?”

    In the original Greek, a literal translation would look closer to the second option. And, this would fit with our rule from before because we could reword it as “Men say him to be…” It sounds really weird in English, but it technically is grammatically correct.

    So, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “whom” could sometimes be used in the way that the KJV uses it, because of influence from both Latin and Greek. Specifically, it says that the use of whom is a “partial imitation of the accusative [plus the] infinitive construction in the biblical source”.

    And Matthew 16:13 is not the only place that the King James Version uses whom like this. You can also find it in places like Mark 8:27 and Luke 9:20.

    In the end, it is technically a grammar error to use whom in the way shown in the KJV. But, it seems like it was an intentional error, where they just wanted to give a weird sounding, somewhat literal translation.

  • What Is The Septuagint?

    You’ve likely heard about the Septuagint before. But what is it?

    Well, it’s the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

    Back when Alexander the Great was off conquering the known world, he didn’t neglect to seize the region of Israel. In the years following Alexander the Great’s death, his generals set up their own kingdoms.

    One of these kingdoms was the Ptolemaic Kingdom. It controlled much of Egypt and the territory of Israel. But remember, this new kingdom was ruled by Greeks, the descendants of Alexander the Great’s generals and officers.

    So, as this kingdom grew, the Greek language became more and more important in the area, even for the local Jewish population.

    Soon enough, the Greek-speaking Jews had a problem: they wanted to worship God and read the Holy Scriptures, but they couldn’t. The Scriptures were all in Hebrew, not Greek.

    Now, there is a very famous story about what happened next. I’ll explain this story, but just know: this is almost certainly hyperbole or even outright fiction.

    The story goes like this. King of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, son of one of Alexander’s generals, was consulting with the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. This librarian asked Ptolemy to send for some Jews from Jerusalem who could translate the Old Testament (not yet called the Old Testament) from Hebrew into Greek. So, Ptolemy did just that.

    Once the Jews heard the request, they selected from amongst themselves six men from each of the twelve tribes. Then, these 72 men (6 X 12 = 72) headed off to Alexandria in Egypt. When they arrived, Ptolemy separated each of the men into separate rooms and asked each one to translate the Torah into Greek (i.e. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).

    And as the story goes, each of these 72 men completed their work in exactly 72 days, and every single translation was entirely identical.

    It is for this reason that we call the Greek translation of the Old Testament the “Septuagint”, from the Latin word septuaginta, which means “seventy”. This is in reference to the 72 scholars who completed their work in 72 days. (And yes, apparently whoever started calling it the Septuagint just decided to round 72 down to 70 to make it sound nicer).

    Again, that is the story told about what happened. Is it true? Probably not. Is it partly true? Possibly.

    What we do know for sure is that the Septuagint first came about in the 3rd century BC. As far as we can tell, this was the first ever major attempt to translate the Scriptures (or any religious text for that matter) into another language.

    Due to lots of different reasons, the early church relied heavily on the Septuagint instead of the original Hebrew Scriptures. This makes sense because many early Christians were Greek-speaking Gentiles.

    In fact, when Jerome was translating the Bible into Latin in the late 300s AD, it was very surprising that he translated straight from the Hebrew into Latin. Most translators of the time saw the Septuagint as an equally inspired work of God, so they translated from the Greek into Latin.

    Overall, the Septuagint is just the general name for any ancient copy of the Old Testament that is in Greek. It’s got a fun story behind the name (septuaginta = 70). And it was the most common translation of the Old Testament for the first few centuries of the church.

  • Why Is The Word Angel In EvANGELism?

    We often hear words that have religious ideas connected to them. So, it becomes easy to just hear words like “Evangelism” or “Messiah” or “Gospel” and pass right on over them without thinking on what they actually mean.

    One great example has to do with the word “evangelism”.

    Evangelism means “the act of spreading the Gospel”.

    But, have you ever noticed the word “angel” in “evANGELism”? Well, the two words are indeed related.

    What a lot of people don’t realize is that we get the word “angel” from the Greek word angelos, which just means “messenger”. So, whenever we see a reference to an “angel” in the Bible, the translators just decided to not actually translate the word; it really means a messenger. In fact, when we do see the word “messenger” in our Bibles, it is the exact same Greek word: angelos (or the Hebrew mal’akh for the Old Testament).

    Alright, so “angel” is just the word “messenger”. How does that help us?

    Well, the word “evangelism” comes from two Greek words: eu, meaning “good” and angellein (the verb form of angelos), which means “to bring a message” or “to announce news”.

    So, to evangelize is literally to bring good news.

    And, if we’re using the proper Greek terms, we are called to be angels (messengers) of the evangel (an old English word for the good news/Gospel).

  • Why Do Certain Numbers Mean Words In The Bible? Thanks To Gematria And Isopsephy.

    You’ve probably heard about some famous examples of numbers being used as codes in the Bible. Specifically, you’ve likely heard that the number 666 was probably a reference to the Emperor Nero.

    But why on earth do numbers mean words? And how does this “code” work?

    Well, a lot of people try to make it sound all complicated, but it’s actually pretty simple.

    In English, we obviously use a certain system of numbers (also called numerals): 1,2,3,4,etc.

    What you may not know is that these numbers (1,2,3,4,etc.) are Arabic numerals. A system of numbers that comes to us from Arabic.

    So, before we began using these Arabic numerals just a few centuries ago, what did we use?

    Well, think back to the Romans. They had a system of Roman numerals (ring a bell?). In this system, the Romans used numbers such as I,V,X,L,C,etc.

    As you can see, all of their numbers were just letters. The only way to tell whether something in writing was meant as letters or numbers was through context. If you saw V CANES, you could assume that the “V” represents “5”, so you could translate the phrase as “5 dogs”.

    This system of Roman numerals is very similar to what the Greeks and Hebrews did.

    Records are unclear, but it appears that the Greeks were the first to develop this system of counting (using their letters to represent numbers instead of spelling out the full name of the number).

    The Greeks called this “isopsephy”, which comes from isos, meaning “equal” and psephos, meaning “count”.

    Then, it appears that following Alexander the Great’s conquest of the east, the new Hellenistic (hellenistic just means Greek) Jews began to develop their own system of isopsephy.

    However, just to keep us a little bit confused, the Hebrews made sure to change the name of isopsephy to “gematria”. Gematria still comes from Greek, but specifically it derives from the word geometria, which is also where we get our word “geometry”. It’s basically just a word that had to do with math, so naming a number system after a math word makes sense.

    So, these systems of isopsephy (for Greek) and gematria (for Hebrew) were pretty much just the same sort of thing as Roman numerals.

    The only big difference is that for the Romans, only a few letters were used as numbers and the rest were always just letters. For Hebrew and Greek though, every letter had a numerical value to go along with it.

    Because of this, you could take any word in Hebrew or Greek, add up all the numbers/letters, and get a total value. This was done pretty commonly for different purposes. Again, the famous example of 666 alludes to Emperor Nero because if you add up the letters of his name in Greek, Neron Kaisar, you get 666.

    Overall, a lot of people like to make this stuff sound all confusing, but just remember, it’s pretty much the same as Roman numerals.

  • What Is The Decapolis?

    We see the word “Decapolis” three times in our Bibles (all in The New Testament), Matthew 4:25, Mark 5:20, and Mark 7:31. But, what on earth is it?

    Well, the word comes from the Greek deka, meaning “ten” and the Greek polis, meaning “city”. So, the Decapolis is the region of ten cities.

    Now, from the reading that I’ve done, it seems that we don’t exactly have the best records for what the Decapolis fully was. But, I’ll go ahead and piece it together as best as I can.

    Pretty much, at the time of Christ, the Decapolis referred to a region mostly east of the Jordan River. There were a total of ten cities (although maybe more than ten) that all were part of the Roman Empire but had been granted a large degree of independence.

    Only one city in the Decapolis was west of the Jordan River. Scythopolis. It was apparently one of the richest and most powerful of the cities.

    And while most of the cities were all more or less in the same region, Damascus was located a good deal further north than the rest.

    There are also conflicting reports of which cities were actually part of the Decapolis. Some resources that I saw said there may have been as many as 18 cities in the Decapolis at some points. It did at least originally refer to just ten cities though (as the name deka polis would have us believe).

    But, was “Decapolis” just a description of that general region, or was it the name for a political alliance or confederation between these ten cities? I have got no clue. Some sources say that it might have been an economic alliance between these rich cities. Others speculate that it was an actual political union. And others still guess that it was just a geographical name with no real significance to how the cities worked together.

    Even though we don’t know too much about how the Decapolis region actually operated, we do know a bit more about its history.

    After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, there were a few new Greek Empires across the Middle East. Over the course of the next couple centuries, these empires founded most of the cities that would later become the Decapolis region.

    Then, in 63 BC Pompey the Great (a famous Roman general) came and conquered a decent chunk of the Middle East. By the time that Pompey came around, the Decapolis region (which was still mainly populated and influenced by Greeks) had become conquered by a new Jewish Kingdom.

    So, Pompey came and effectively liberated the Decapolis. He granted several cities (maybe ten in total) a large degree of independence from Rome. They were on the extreme border of the Roman Empire at the time, and the cities were all apparently very happy to be in charge of themselves again. In fact, I read several sources describing them as city-states. They even had permission from the Romans to mint their own coins.

    Since these cities still kept such a strong Greek influence, that can explain one very well known story in The New Testament. When Jesus crossed over the Sea of Galilee into the “region of the Gerasenes” (Mark 5:1), He’d entered the Decapolis. The city of Gerasa (from whom the Gerasenes get their name) was another city-state within the Decapolis. And when Jesus at the end of the encounter with the “Garasene Demoniac” casts the demons into a giant herd of pigs, did you ever wonder why there were pigs? Remember, the Jews considered pigs unclean. Well, they were in a Gentile region, the Decapolis. So, these pagans didn’t care much about Jewish dietary law, and they kept plenty of pigs.

    From what I can tell, we just don’t have too much information about the Decapolis. But, to sum it all up, it seems that it was a region of at least ten autonomous city-states which were established by Pompey the Great in 63 BC. They were mostly Greeks/Gentiles. And they maintained their wealth and semi-independence until around 106 AD.

    I hope that helps.

  • Difference Between Christ, Messiah, And The Anointed One

    Messiah comes from the Hebrew word mashiah, which means “the anointed one”.

    This idea of anointing is seen all throughout both The Old Testament and The New Testament. There are many examples of God commanding different people to anoint kings, prophets, and priests in The Old Testament.

    “Anointing” literally means “to smear with oil” (it comes from the Latin word unguere, meaning “to smear”). God ordered this ceremony of rubbing people with oil (apparently usually a special kind of oil for which he gives us the recipe in Exodus 30:22-33) many times, seemingly as a special ritual to show that someone or something is set apart for God.

    This process was especially important for men of high standing, like men who were about to become king or about to become priests.

    So, when we read in The Old Testament about how The Messiah is coming (think Daniel 9:25-26), we can know that “Messiah” is just being used as a catchall term to describe the one who is specially chosen and set apart for God. We know that this Messiah was Jesus, and even though He was anointed with oil at times (like Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet/smearing his feet with oil), He was called the Messiah because the term “anointed one” had just become a general term to describe someone set apart and chosen by God.

    Now, that’s for the Hebrew.

    When The New Testament was written in Greek, though, the authors properly translated the word mashiah into Greek as khristos, which also means “the anointed one”. This Greek term is where we get the English word “Christ”.

    There are also two instances in the whole of The New Testament where the word “Messiah” is used, John 1:41 and John 4:25. In both of these verses, the author of John uses the word messiah because he’s recording what someone who spoke Hebrew or Aramaic was saying. He does also immediately follow it up both times by saying that “Messiah” is just the Hebrew word for “Christ” (in English “anointed one”).

    Also, the word “Messiah” had a real interesting history. As it traveled through Greek and Latin, it became Messias. And this used to be the English word for “Messiah” too. But, when the authors of the Geneva Bible (one of the first English Bibles) were translating it into English, they decided to make the word look more Hebrew. So, they replaced the ‘s’ with an ‘h’, giving us our modern English word for Messiah.

    I’m not entirely sure why most translators choose to not translate the words “Messiah” and “Christ”, but I hope that this is some useful information for you.

  • Word of The Week No 9: Hosanna

    We only see the word “Hosanna” in two places in our English translations of the Bible, Mark 11:9-10 and Matthew 21:9,15.

    These examples both happen during Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Here are all the verses where we can find “Hosanna”:

    Mark 11:9-10: 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

    “Hosanna!”

    “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    10 “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”

    “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

    Matthew 21:9: 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

    “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

    “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

    And Matthew 21:15 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.

    So, what on earth does “Hosanna” mean?

    Well, the word in the original Greek manuscripts is hosanna, which is just a transliteration of hosha’na, which is either a Hebrew word or an Aramaic word.

    Either way, this word, hosha’na, seems to be a contraction of the Hebrew word hoshi’ah-nna. And this word, hoshi’ah-nna, does appear in other parts of the Bible, specifically in Psalm 118:25.

    In Psalm 118:25-26, we read: 25 Lord, save us!
        Lord, grant us success!

    26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

    That first phrase, “Lord, save us!” (also translated as “Save, we pray”), is the Hebrew word hoshi’ah-nna. When this got shortened down to hosha’na, it started to be used by Jews as a common part of a hymn/prayer.

    And over time the word began to mean not just “Save us” but something more along the lines of “Honor to the one who saves”. This explains why the crowds were shouting Hosanna as a shout of praise. The crowds meant “Honor to the Savior” and “Honor to the Messiah” when they were shouting out Hosanna.

    Plus, as an interesting connection, Jesus’ Aramaic/Hebrew name was Yehoshua, which translates as “The Lord is Salvation” or “The Lord is deliverance”. So, the shouts of Hosanna had an extra connection directly to His earthly name.

    Also, notice how in Psalm 118:26, it says “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” This is exactly what the crowds shouted in both Mark 11:9 and Matthew 21:9. That is a major piece of evidence which lets us know that the word Hosanna does indeed originate from hoshi’ah-nna in Psalm 118:25.

    The Gospel of Luke, per usual, does not contain this Hebrew/Aramaic expression. But in Luke 19:38, we see again the slightly altered phrase “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    So, “Hosanna” was originally a cry of distress meaning “Save us!”, but over time it changed into a shout of praise to the Lord/Savior/Messiah. And this shout of praise was most fulfilled during Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, just a few days before He would in fact save us.

  • Golgotha, Calvary, And The Place of The Skull

    The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John all tell us that Jesus was crucified in a place called Golgotha.

    They also all tell us that Golgotha is a Hebrew word meaning “place of the skull”. (Technically, Golgotha is an Aramaic word, but Aramaic is commonly called Hebrew, since it was the common language of the Hebrew people at the time).

    Plus, the Gospel of Luke simply tells us that they crucified him at a place called “The Skull”.

    Every time we see the word “skull” in these passages, it is a translation of the Greek word Kranion, which means “skull” and is also where we get our modern word “cranium”.

    But, where do we get the word “Calvary” out of all this?

    Well, when the translator Jerome was compiling all the Bible into Latin in the late 300s AD, he properly translated that Greek word Kranion into the Latin word for “skull”, Calvaria.

    Then, as the centuries went by, some people translated the Latin Bible into English. When they did this, they just borrowed the Latin term and called the place “Calvary”, from Calvaria.

    Most modern English translations actually use the original manuscripts (Greek) when translating The New Testament though. So, now most Bibles will call it “the place of the skull”.

    But, we still have the word “Calvary” now, which is entirely unrelated to an army of horses, a “cavalry”.

    And, as for the place where Jesus was crucified, there’s been a whole lot of guessing about where it is and why it’s called the place of the skull.

    First, as a quick note, in the original Greek it’s more accurate to say “of the skull” and not “of a skull”.

    Anyhow, all four Gospels just call Golgotha/Calvary a “place”. Tradition has said that this was probably a hill, but we don’t really know for certain.

    A lot of people seem to think the place was called Golgotha because it was on a hill that kind of looked like a skull. Some other people say that it might have been because it could have been close to some tombs. And there are a good deal more guesses that scholars have made over the years.

    The gist of it is all pretty simple though. Jesus was crucified at a place called “place of the skull”. The Hebrew (Aramaic) term for “place of the skull” is Golgotha. And “Calvary” is just pretty much the Latin word for the same thing.