Synonyms of the New Testament
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i[kethri188 lii. a]su liii. makroqumi liv. strhnia lv. qli?yij, stenoxwri202 lvi. a[plou?j, a]ke lvii. xro lviii. fe CONTENTS. PAGE
§lix. ko lx. ne lxi. me lxii. kaphleu lxiii. a]gaqwsu lxiv. di lxv. lupe lxvi. a[marti nomi lxvii. a]rxai?oj, palaio lxviii. a@fqartoj, a]ma lxix. metanoe lxx. morfh<, sxh?ma, i]de261 lxxi. yuxiko lxvii. sarkiko lxxiii. pnoh<, pneu?ma, a@nemoj, lai?lay, qu lxxiv. dokima lxxiv. sofi lxxvi. lale lxxvii. a]polu lxxviii. yalmo lxxix. a]gra lxxx. doke lxxxi. zw?on, qhri lxxxii. u[pe lxxxiii. foneu lxxxiv. kako 1xxxv. ei]likrinh lxxxvi. po lxxxvii. pa lxxxviii. i[ero lxxxix. fwnh<, lo xc. lo xci. te qauma?sion 339 CONTENTS. PAGE § xcii. ko xciii. au]qa xciv. a]poka xcv. a@lloj, e!teroj 357 xcvi. poie xcvii. bwmo xcviii. lao xcix. baptismo c. sko ci. be cii. mo ciii. a@mwmoj, a@memptoj, a]ne civ. bradu cv. dhmiourgo cvi. a]stei?oj, w[rai?oj, kalo cvii. 1. e]lpi 2. presbu 3. fre 4. sxi 5. makroqumi 6. a]na 7. fo 8. tu
9. loidore 10. o]fei 11. prau~j, h[su 12. teqemeliwme 13. qnhto 14. e@leoj, oi]ktirmo 15. yiquristh 16. a@xrhstoj, a]xrei?oj 394
17. nomiko INDEX OF OTHER WORDS 399 to watch, as they obtain a deeper meaning, and receive a new consecration, in the Christian Church; words which
the Church did not invent, but has assumed into its ser- vice, and employed in a far loftier sense than any to which
the world has ever put them before. The very word by which the Church is named is itself an example—a more
illustrious one could scarcely be found—of this progressive ennobling of a word.1 For we have e]kklhsi tinct stages of meaning—the heathen, the Jewish, and the Christian. In respect of the first, h[ e]kklhsi Euripides, Orestes, 939) was the lawful assembly in a free Greek city of all those possessed of the rights of citizen-
Christenthum ware nicht als was es siegend uber Griechenthum und Romerthum sich ausgewiesen, hatte es zu reden vermocht, oder zu
reden sich zwirgen lassen mussen, nach den Grundbegriffen griechischen Geisteslebens, griechischer Weltanschauung. Nur sprachumbildend, aus-
stossend was entweiht war, hervorziehend was griechische Geistesrichtung ungebuhrlich zuruckgestellt hatte, verklarend endlich womit das acht-
menschliche, von Anfang an so sittlich gerichtete Griechentlium die Vorstufen der gottlichen Wahrheit erreicht hatte: nur so ein in seinen
Grundbegriffen christianisirtes Griechisch sich anbildend konnten die Apostel Christi der Welt, die damals der allgemeinen Bildung nach
eine griechische war, die Sprache des Geistes, der durch sie zeugte, verrnitteln.'
2 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § 1. that they were summoned out of the whole population, a select portion of it, including neither the populace, nor
strangers, nor yet those who had forfeited their civic rights, this is expressed in the first. Both the calling
(the klh?sij, Phil. iii. 14; 2 Tim. i. 9), and the calling out (the e]klogh<, Rom. xi. 7; 2 Pet. i. 10), are moments to be
remembered, when the word is assumed into a higher Christian sense, for in them the chief part of its peculiar
adaptation to its auguster uses lies.1 It is interesting to observe how, on one occasion in the N. T., the word returns
to this earlier significance (Acts xix. 32, 39, 41). Before, however, more fully considering that word, it
will need to consider a little the anterior history of another with which I am about to compare it. Suna-
but is by no means an old word in classical Greek, and in it altogether wants that technical signification which
already in the Septuagint, and still more plainly in the Apocrypha, it gives promise of acquiring, and which it is
found in the N. T. to have fully acquired. But sunagwgh<, while travelling in this direction, did not leave behind it
the meaning which is the only one that in classical Greek it knew; and often denotes, as it would there, any gather-
ing or bringing together of persons or things; thus we vetur primum; ideo conversionern hominum vocationem vocari, non tantum quia Deus eos per se suumque Verbum, quasi clamore, vocat;
sed etiam quia sicut herus ex turbtl famulorum certos aliquos ad aliqua singularia munia evocat, sic Dens quoque turn totum populum suum
vocat ad cultum suum (Hos. xi. I), turn etiam singulos homines ad certas singularesque functiones. (Act. xiii. 2.) Quoniam autem non
tantum vocatur Populus Dei ad cultum Dei, sed etiam vocatur ex reliqua turba aut confusione generis humani, ideo dicitur Ecclesia; quasi
dicas, Evocata divinitus ex reliqua impiorum colluvie, ad cultum cele- brationemque Dei, et aeternam felicitatem.' Compare Witsius In Symbol.
pp. 394-397. §1. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 3
3), and such like. It was during the time which inter- vened between the closing of the 0. T. canon and the
opening of that of the New that sunagwgh< acquired that technical meaning of which we find it in full possession
when the Gospel history begins; designating, as there it does, the places set apart for purposes of worship and
the reading and expounding of the Word of God, the ‘synagogues,’ as we find them named; which, capable as
they were of indefinite multiplication, were the necessary complement of the Temple, which according to the divine
intention was and could be but one. But to return to e]kklhsi other words, pass immediately and at a single step from the heathen world to the Christian Church: but here, as
so often, the Septuagint supplies the link of connexion, the point of transition, the word being there prepared for
its highest meaning of all. When the Alexandrian trans- lators undertook the rendering of the Hebrew Scriptures,
they found in them two constantly recurring words, namely, hdAfe and lhAqA. For these they employed generally,
and as their most adequate Greek equivalents, sunagwgh< and e]kklhsi scribed to themselves is as follows—to render hdf for the most part by sunagwgh< (Exod. xii. 3; Lev. iv. 13; Num.
i. 2, and altogether more than a hundred times), and, whatever other renderings of the word they may adopt, in
no single case to render it by e]kklhsi wished that they had shown the same consistency in
respect of lhq; but they have not; for while e]kklhsi their more frequent rendering (Deut. xviii. 16; Judg. xx.
2; I Kin. viii. 14, and in all some seventy times), they too often render this also by sunagwhgh< (Lev. iv. 13; Num.
x. 3; Dent. v. 22, and in all some five and twenty times), thus breaking down for the Greek reader the distinction
4 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § 1. lish Version has the same lack of a consistent rendering. Its two words are 'congregation' and 'assembly;' but
instead of constantly assigning one to one, and one to the other, it renders hdf now by 'congregation' (Lev. x. 17;
Num. i. 16; Josh. ix. 27), and now by ‘assembly’ (Lev. iv. 13); and on the other hand, lhq sometimes by 'as-
sembly' (Judg. xxi. 8; 2 Chron. xxx. 23), but much oftener by 'congregation' (Judg. xxi 5; Josh. viii. 35).
There is an interesting discussion by Vitringa (De two Hebrew synonyms; the result of which is summed up in the following statements: ‘Notat proprie lhq uni-
versam alicujus populi multitudinem, vinculis societatts unitam et rempublicam sive civitatem quondam Consti-
tuentem, cum vocabulum hdf ex indole et vi significationis sage tantum dicat quemcunque hominum coetum et con-
ventum, sive minorem sive majorem’ (p. 80). And again: ‘Sunagwgh<, ut et hdf, semper significat coetum conjunctum
et congregatum, etiamsi nullo forte vinculo ligatum, sed populum constituit, per leges et vincula inter se junctam, etsi saepe fiat non sit coacta vel cogi possit' (p. 88).
Accepting this as a true distinction, we shall see that it was not without due reason that our Lord (Matt. xvi.
18; xviii. 17) and his Apostles claimed this, as the nobler word, to designate the new society of which He was the
Founder, being as it was a society knit together by the closest spiritual bonds, and altogether independent of
space.
withdrawn from the Jewish congregation; that too was "the Church in the wilderness" (Acts vii. 38); for Chris-
tian and Jewish differed only in degree, and not in kind. Nor yet do we find sunagwgh< wholly renounced by the
Church; the latest honorable use of it in the N. T., indeed § 1. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 5
whom it was especially given to maintain unbroken to the latest possible moment the outward bonds connecting the
Synagogue and the Church, namely, by St. James (ii. 2); but in a more general sense (2 Thess. ii.1; Heb. x. 25). Occasionally also in the early Fathers, in Ignatius for
is instance (Ep. ad Polyc. 4; for other examples see Suicer, s. v.), we find sunagwgh< still employed as an honorable
designation of the Church, or of her places of assembly. Still there were causes at work, which led the faithful to
have less and less pleasure in the appropriation of this name to themselves; and in the end to leave it altogether
to those, whom in the latest book of the canon the Lord had characterized for their fierce opposition to the truth
even as "the synagogue of Satan" (Rev. iii. 9; cf. John viii. 4). Thus the greater fitness and dignity of the title
Church was ever rooting itself more predominantly in the soil of the heathen world, breaking off more entirely from
its Jewish stock and stem. This of itself would have led the faithful to the letting fall of sunagwgh<, a word with no
such honorable history to look back on, and permanently associated with Jewish worship, and to the ever more
exclusive appropriation to themselves of e]kklhsi familiar already, and of so honorable a significance, in
Greek ears. It is worthy of note that the Ebionites, in reality a Jewish sect, though they had found their way for
a while into the Christian Church, should have acknow- ledged the rightfulness of this distribution of terms.
Epiphanius (Haeres. xxx. 18) reports of these, sunagwgh>n It will be perceived from what has been said, that Au- gustine, by a piece of good fortune which he had no right
to expect, was only half in the wrong, when transferring his Latin etymologies to the Greek and Hebrew, and not
6 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § 1. as was improbable enough, he finds the reason for attri- buting sunagwgh< to the Jewish, and e]kklhsito the
Christian Church, in the fact that ‘convocatio’ (=e]kklh- the first being properly the calling together of men, the second the gathering together (‘congregatio,’ from ‘con-
grego,’ and that from ‘grex’) of cattle.1 See Field, On The panh in the e]kklhsi the sense of an assembly coming together for the trans- action of business. The panh was a solemn assembly for purposes of festal rejoicing; and on this account it is found joined continually with
Hos. ii. 11; ix. 5; and Isai. lxvi. where panhguri properly a set discourse pronounced at one of these great festal gatherings. Business might grow out of the fact
that such multitudes were assembled, since many, and for various reasons, would be glad to avail themselves of the
gathering; but only in the same way as a ‘fair' grew out of a 'feria,' ‘holiday’out of a 'holy-day.' Strabo (x. 5) notices
the business-like aspect which the panhgu sumed (h! te panh x. 32. 9); which was indeed to such an extent their promi- nent feature, that the Latins rendered panh quia et ipsortan proprie synagoga dici solet, quamvis et Ecclesia dicta sit. Nostri vero Ecclesiarn nunquam synagogam dixerunt, sed semper, Eccle-
siam sive discernendi caussa, sive quad inter congregationem, unde syna- goga, et convocationem, unde Ecclesia nomen accepit, distetaliquid; quod
scilicet congregari et pecora soleut, atque ipsa proprie, quorum et greges proprie dicimus; convocari autem magis est utentium ratione, sicu sunt
homines.' So also the author of a Commentary on the Book of Proverbs formerly ascribed to Jerome (Opp. vol. v. p. 533); and by Vitringa (p. 91)
cited as his. §II. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 7
tended (Cicero, Tusc. v. 3; Justin, 5). These with the other solemn games were eminently, though not ex-
clusively, the panhgureij of the Greek nation (Thucydides, i. 25 ; Isocrates, Paneg. I). Keeping this festal character
of the panh in the word's employment at Heb. xii. 23; where only in
the N. T. it occurs. The Apostle is there setting forth the communion of the Church militant on earth with the
Church triumphant in heaven,—of the Church toiling and suffering here with that Church from which all weariness
and toil have for ever passed away (Rev. xxi. 4); and how could he better describe this last than as a panh as the glad and festal assembly of heaven? Very beauti- fully Delitzsch (in loc.): [Panh zahlreiche und inbesondere festliche, festlich froliche und sic ergotzende Versammlung. Man denkt bei panh an Festgesang, Festreigen und Festspiele, und das Leben vor Gottes Angesicht ist ja wirklich eine unaufhorliche
Festfeier.' N. T.; qeio crypha, Wisd. xviii. 9); qeo dered both by 'Godhead; yet they must not be regarded as identical in meaning, nor even as two different forms
of the same word, which in process of time have separated off from one another, and acquired different shades of
significance. On the contrary, there is a real distinction between them, and one which grounds itself on their
different derivations; qeo not from to> qei?on), which is nearly though not quite equi-
valent to Qeo Comparing the two passages where they severally occur,
we shall at once perceive the fitness of the employment of 8 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § II.
(Rom. i. 20) St. Paul is declaring how much of God may be known from the revelation of Himself which He has
made in nature, from those vestiges of Himself which men may everywhere trace in the world around them. Yet it
is not the personal God whom any man may learn to know by these aids: He can be known only by the revelation
of Himself in his Son; but only his divine attributes, his majesty and glory. This Theophylact feels, who on Romans
i. 20 gives megaleio not to be doubted that St. Paul uses this vaguer, more ab-
stract, and less personal word, just because he would affirm that men may know God's power and majesty, his qei?a
that they may know Himself from these, or from any- thing short of the revelation of his Eternal Word.1 Mo-
tives not dissimilar induce him to use to> qei?on rather than xvii. 29). But in the second passage (Col. ii. 9) St. Paul is de-
claring that in the Son there dwells all the fulness of absolute Godhead; they were no mere rays of divine glory-
which gilded Him, lighting up his person for a season and with a splendour not his own; but He was, and is, abso-
lute and perfect God; and the Apostle uses qeo express this essential and personal Godhead of the Son;
in the words of Augustine (De Civ. Dei, vii. I): ‘Status ejus qui sit Deus.’ Thus Beza rightly: ‘Non dicit: th>n
ut magis etiam expresse loquatur; . . . h[ qeio videtur potius quam naturam ipsam declarare.' And
Bengel ‘Non modo divinae virtutes, sed ipsa divina natura.’ De Wette has sought to express the distinction
ease vim et naturam divinam arbitrantur.' II. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 9
keit,' and qeo There have not been wanting those who have denied
that any such distinction was intended by St. Paul; and they rest this denial on the assumption that no such
difference between the forces of the two words can be satisfactorily made out. But, even supposing that such a
difference could not be shown in classical Greek, this of itself would be in no way decisive on the matter. The
Gospel of Christ might for all this put into words, and again draw out from them, new forces, evolve latent di-
tinctions, which those who hitherto employed the words may not have required, but which had become necessary
now. And that this distinction between ‘deity’ and ‘divinity,’ if I may use these words to represent severally
and which therefore would seek its utterance in Christian theology, of this we have signal proof in the fact that the
Latin Christian writers were not satisfied with ‘divinitas,’ which they found ready to their hand in the writings of
Cicero and others; and which they sometimes were con- tent to use (see Piper, Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1875, p. 79
sqq.); but themselves coined ‘deitas’ as the only adequate Latin representative of the Greek qeo tine's express testimony to the fact (De Civ. Dei, vii. I). ‘Hanc divinitatem, vel ut sic dixerim deitatem; mini et
hoc verbo uti jam nostros non piget, ut de Graeco expressius transferant id quod illi qeo But not to urge this, nor yet the different etymologies of the words, that one is to> ei]nai< tina qeo in their meanings, examples, so far as they can be adduced, go to support the same. Both qeo general the abstract words in every language, are of late introduction; and one of them, qeo Indeed, only two examples of it from classical Greek have 10 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § III.
9); the other from Plutarch (De Def. Orac. 10): ou!twj e]k Plutarch (De Isid. et Osir. 22), may be added. In all of these it expresses, in agreement with the view here
asserted, Godhead in the absolute sense, or at all events in as absolute a sense as the heathen could conceive it.
ment everywhere bears out the distinction here drawn. There is ever a manifestation of the divine, of some divine
attributes, in that to which qeio absolute essential Deity. Thus Lucian (De Ca. 17) attri-
butes qeio ander would have raised him to the rank of a god; and
Plutarch speaks of the qeio v. I ; cf. De Is. et Os. 2; Sull. 6; with various other pas-
sages to the like effect. It may be observed, in conclusion, that whether this
distinction was intended, as I am fully persuaded it was, by St. Paul or not, it established itself firmly in the later
theological language of the Church—the Greek Fathers using never qeio expressing the essential Godhead of the Three several Persons in the Holy Trinity.
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