What the Greek Carried

Words Do Not Travel Empty

When the message of Yahushua was carried from Hebrew into Greek, Hebrew words had to be traded for Greek ones. The Greek words available already belonged to someone. Many had served for centuries in the temples of the gods, at the oracle of Delphi, in the schools of the philosophers, and on the inscriptions of the emperors. They came into the New Testament carrying their meanings with them.

The Greek did not erase the Hebrew. It added to it — a little philosophy here, a little mythology there — until the teaching built on those words drifted far from what Moses and the prophets meant.

That is not a small adjustment. It changes how soul, grave, favor, belief, and dozens of other words are read — and with them, the doctrines built on those words.

How the Hebrew Is Known

The New Testament itself shows the Hebrew word beneath the Greek. Every time it quotes the Old Testament, it hands the reader both words side by side.

ACTS 2:27 — KJV

Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

Peter is quoting Psalm 16:10. The Greek says psychē and Hadēs. The psalm he is quoting says nephesh and Sheol. The Greek translation of the Old Testament, made about two centuries before Messiah, confirms the same trades hundreds of times over, and both texts still survive to be checked.

Three Examples

• Nephesh became psychē. In the Torah, nephesh is a living creature that can die: “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). In Greek philosophy, psychē was a soul that could never die (Plato, Phaedo).

• Sheol became Hadēs. Sheol is the silent grave: “the dead know not any thing” (Ecclesiastes 9:5). Hades was the name of a Greek god and his underworld of judgment and torment.

• The Name became kurios. Where the Hebrew wrote Yahuah, the Greek wrote kurios, “lord” — the title of emperors and of the gods (Matthew 22:44; Psalm 110:1).

In each case the Greek word overlapped the Hebrew at first. The trouble came with what rode in on it.

The Warning Was Already Given

COLOSSIANS 2:8 — KJV

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Messiah.

Paul warned the assemblies about the very freight these words carried. The answer is not to throw away the Greek text but to read it the way the apostles thought it: trace every key word back to the Hebrew it replaced, and define it by the Torah and the Prophets.

The Full Record

Every Greek word in the New Testament has been screened — 5,523 entries in Strong’s dictionary — and fifty-nine passed the test: words whose pagan or philosophical meaning can be shown to have changed a doctrine. Each is set out with its pagan source, the Hebrew beneath it, what it changed, and, where Scripture provides it, the verse that bridges the two.

The full list is on the page Words Your Bible Borrowed.

One of eight witnesses in a single case. What the Greek Carried is the reason the case matters — the Greek words that came in carrying their gods and philosophers, and the Hebrew they replaced. The eight together make the case framed in the hub study, Spoken in Hebrew.