‘Humpty,’ I called out. ‘I have a question for you. How much Greek do you know?’
‘Isosceles,’ he replied. ‘Oh, and pi and alpha.’
Yes, indeed. And we are more familiar with the Greek New Testament than we may suppose. In November we can hardly avoid the word ‘cenotaph’. It simply means ‘empty tomb’, which is what the monument in Whitehall is. It is a composite memorial of all those who lost their lives in war, whether we know where their bodies are resting or not. But the first part of this word is interesting because it is at the heart of a passage in which Paul says that at the incarnation Jesus ‘emptied himself’ and was found in human form (Philippians 2.7). Much discussion has taken place about this. Did Jesus, for example, empty himself of knowledge of cosmic relativity or – to move from the sublime to the ridiculous – of the best place to go looking for gold?
When we talk of the 12 apostles we are talking Greek. The Greek word ‘apostello’ means ‘I send out’. When we talk about evangelism, we are in the same way talking about the good news. But when we ask God to give us our daily bread, we are basing our prayer on a Greek word that nobody knows the meaning of. We translate it as ‘daily’. It can mean ‘essential’. Not everything in life is simple.
Take the word ‘grammar’. This comes from the Greek for a letter, a letter of the alphabet, that is. Free-standing, the word means the structure of a language. Paul takes the word ‘gramma’ and opposes it to ‘spirit’ (II Corinthians 3.6) and we follow him. We talk of obeying the spirit rather than the letter of the law. This takes us close to the heart of the Gospel.
‘Hoi polloi’ is a term that has become naturalised in English. It means ‘the many’. We find it is a significant verse in Mark’s Gospel. The writer refers to a ‘lutron anti pollon’ (10.45). It is important in that it affirms that Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many. This also takes us to the heart of the Gospel.
Some of the words in our English Bibles come directly from Greek. We don’t need to know Greek or Aramaic to be a Christian but it helps to know something about the occasional word in the New Testament. Maran atha!* Now that’s not just Greek. It may be written in Greek letters but it’s all Aramaic to me. And I know nothing about Aramaic. I’m lost. But I do know one thing. Aramaic is the language Jesus himself spoke. In the Greek New Testament there is a sprinkling of Aramaic words to remind us of that. I expect Humpty knows that too.
*They tell me that this means ‘Come, O Lord.’ See 1 Corinthians 16.22.
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