Idioms and Hebraisms

Every language spoken by people who think in another language picks up an accent, not only in its sounds but in its turns of phrase. The New Testament was written in the Koine, the common Greek of the eastern Mediterranean, by writers most of whom were Jews, about a Jewish Messiah, for churches whose Bible was the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. So it is not surprising that much of it speaks Greek with a Hebrew accent. These turns of phrase are called Semitisms, from the family of languages that includes Hebrew and Aramaic. Where they come from the Hebrew Bible, usually through the Septuagint, they are often called Hebraisms; where they reflect the Aramaic that Jesus and the first disciples spoke, Aramaisms.

The Aramaic shows through plainly in a handful of words the Gospel writers kept and then translated for their Greek readers: Talitha koum (Mark 5:41), Ephphatha (Mark 7:34), Abba (Mark 14:36), and Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani from the cross (Mark 15:34). Paul writes Μαράνα θά (Marana tha, our Lord, come) at the end of 1 Corinthians (16:22), in Aramaic, to a Greek church, which tells you the first Christians prayed the phrase in Jesus' own language before they prayed it in theirs. These are not idioms; they are loan words. But they are a reminder that the Greek of the Gospels is often a report of words first spoken in another language.

The anchor of this lesson comes from the part of the New Testament where the Hebrew accent is strongest. Luke opens his Gospel with one long, polished sentence (1:1-4), built the way a Greek historian built a preface. Then at verse 5 he changes voice. In the SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) the verse opens Ἐγένετο ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου (Egeneto en tais hēmerais Hērōdou, it came about in the days of Herod): this is the sound of the Septuagint, and Luke 1 and 2 keep it up, with short clauses joined by and, angels, barren women, priests, songs and blessings. Luke can write elegant Greek, as his preface proves. Here he chooses to tell the story of the Messiah's birth in the style of Israel's own scriptures.

For much of the nineteenth century, scholars noticed how different New Testament Greek was from the Greek of Plato and the classical writers, and some concluded that it was a language of its own, a special biblical Greek shaped by the Holy Spirit, sometimes called Holy Ghost Greek. That view did not survive the papyri. Tens of thousands of everyday documents found in the sands of Egypt from the 1890s onwards, letters, contracts, receipts and school exercises, turned out to use much of the vocabulary and grammar that had seemed peculiar to the New Testament.

Two scholars made the case that New Testament Greek is simply the ordinary Koine of its day. Adolf Deissmann, in Light from the Ancient East (German 1908, English 1910), set the New Testament beside the papyri and argued that its writers used the common speech of ordinary people, not a sacred dialect. James Hope Moulton, in the Prolegomena (1906) to his Grammar of New Testament Greek, argued that many supposed Semitisms were in fact normal colloquial Greek, found in papyri written by people who knew no Hebrew at all. Their case is strong: a reader who wants to know what a New Testament word or construction meant should look first at how ordinary Greek speakers used it.

Other scholars pressed back, with evidence of their own. Matthew Black, in An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (1946), argued that the sayings of Jesus show Aramaic patterns of rhythm, wordplay and grammar beneath the Greek, sometimes visible only when the Greek is put back into Aramaic. Nigel Turner, who wrote the volumes on syntax and style that completed Moulton's grammar (the volume on style appeared in 1976), went further and argued that the Greek of the Bible was a distinct kind of Jewish Greek, shaped deeply by the Septuagint and by Semitic habits of thought, and that the papyri had been made to prove too much. Their case is strong too: some constructions are rare in the papyri and common in the Septuagint and the Gospels, and they cluster in exactly the places where a Semitic source or model is likely.

A great deal of agreement now lies between these positions, and it is worth stating plainly. New Testament Greek is real Koine, not a holy dialect. Semitic influence on it is also real, and varies a great deal from book to book: strong in the Gospels, Acts and Revelation, much lighter in Hebrews and in parts of Paul. Some of what looks Semitic is ordinary colloquial Greek that happens to match Hebrew; some of it, especially in Luke, is deliberate imitation of the Septuagint's style, the way an English preacher might slip into the language of the King James Bible to sound biblical. What is still argued is how much of the Semitic colouring comes from Aramaic sources behind the Gospels, how much from the Septuagint, and how much from writers who simply thought as Jews. For a student, the practical rule is the same whichever view he holds: when a phrase sounds odd in Greek, ask whether it sounds normal in the Hebrew Bible.

Answered and said. The participle ἀποκριθείς (apokritheis, answering) and its forms appear 104 times in the SBLGNT, almost all in the Gospels, nearly always followed by a verb of saying. It copies a Hebrew habit of narrative, in which a speaker answered and said even when no one had asked him anything. Matthew 11:25 is the clearest case: ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν, but what follows is a prayer, after no question at all, and the BSB renders it Jesus declared. John has his own form, ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν (apekrithē Iēsous kai eipen, Jesus answered and said, 3:3), which the BSB renders Jesus replied. When the interlinear shows answering, do not invent a question to explain it. Look for one, and if there is none, read it as began to speak.

Son of. To call someone the son of a thing is to say that thing marks him. A son of peace (Luke 10:6) is a man of peace, someone ready to receive it. The sons of light and the sons of this age (Luke 16:8) are people who belong to the light or to this age. Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17) says something about James and John's temper, which Luke 9:54 illustrates. Children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) are people under wrath. The same idiom stands behind sons of the Most High in Luke 6:35, where those who love their enemies show the family likeness of a God who is kind to the ungrateful. In each case, read son of as one who has the character of, or belongs to, or is bound for.

It came about. ἐγένετο (egeneto, it happened, it came about) opening a story copies the Hebrew narrative opening the King James Version renders and it came to pass. Counted in the SBLGNT, the form ἐγένετο occurs 69 times in Luke against 13 in Matthew, though not all of those are the idiom. Modern translations usually leave it out or turn it into a time phrase, as the BSB does in Luke 1:5, In the time of Herod. It is a signal of a new episode, not a statement that something happened.

Set his face. Luke 9:51 says literally that Jesus τὸ πρόσωπον ἐστήρισεν (to prosōpon estērisen, set firm his face) to go to Jerusalem. The BSB renders it resolutely set out for Jerusalem, which gives the meaning. But the idiom has a history. God tells Ezekiel to set your face against the mountains of Israel (Ezekiel 6:2), and the Servant in Isaiah 50:7 says I have set My face like flint, in a passage about suffering insult and trusting God to vindicate him. A reader who hears that history hears that Jesus goes to Jerusalem with a prophet's resolve and a servant's suffering ahead of him.

Found favour, and the strengthening repeat. The angel tells Mary εὗρες γὰρ χάριν παρὰ τῷ θεῷ (heures gar charin para tō theō, for you have found favour with God, Luke 1:30), the phrase used of Noah, who found favor in the eyes of the LORD (Genesis 6:8). And at the Last Supper Jesus says Ἐπιθυμίᾳ ἐπεθύμησα (Epithymia epethymēsa, with desire I have desired, Luke 22:15), a noun and verb of the same family put together for emphasis, which copies a Hebrew construction and which the BSB renders I have eagerly desired. The same Hebrew construction lies behind you will surely die in Genesis 2:17.

Truly I tell you. ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν (amēn legō hymin, amen I say to you) brings a Hebrew word into the middle of Greek sentences. In the Old Testament and in Jewish prayer, amen comes at the end, agreeing with what someone else has said. In the Gospels Jesus puts it at the beginning of his own words, as in Matthew 6:2, and in John he doubles it, Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν (3:3). Joachim Jeremias argued that this way of speaking is a distinctive mark of Jesus himself, a claim to speak with an authority that needs no one else's agreement. Scholars debate how unique it was, but the pattern in the Gospels is plain, and the BSB's Truly, truly is a reminder that the word is Hebrew.

The idiom that matters most for preaching is the use of hate to mean love less, or set in second place. Genesis 29 shows it in a family: Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah (29:30), and the next verse says Leah was unloved, where the Hebrew word is the ordinary word for hated. Jacob did not hate Leah in the English sense; he preferred Rachel, and Leah felt it as rejection. Deuteronomy 21:15-17 uses the same pair, beloved and unloved, of two wives, in a law about the rights of the firstborn.

Luke 14:26 is the hard case. The SBLGNT reads οὐ μισεῖ τὸν πατέρα ἑαυτοῦ (ou misei ton patera heautou, does not hate his own father), and the list goes on to mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters and even his own life. Matthew 10:37 gives the same teaching as ὁ φιλῶν πατέρα ἢ μητέρα ὑπὲρ ἐμὲ (ho philōn patera ē mētera hyper eme, the one who loves father or mother more than me). Set side by side, the two Gospels show what the Semitic idiom means: Jesus is not commanding emotional hostility to one's family, which would contradict the command to honour father and mother that he upholds elsewhere (Mark 7:10-13). He is commanding that he come first, so absolutely that every other love looks like hatred beside it.

Notice what the idiom does not do. It does not soften the demand. A disciple who must love Christ more than his own life (14:26) and carry his cross (14:27) has not been let off by a lesson in Hebrew. If anything the idiom sharpens the saying, because it removes the excuse that Jesus could not have meant it. He meant exactly what Matthew says, and what Luke's starker words make unforgettable. A preacher who explains the idiom and then lets his hearers relax has explained the words and lost the point.

The same idiom is part of a debated text, and it is right to say so. Malachi 1:2-3 says Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated, and Paul quotes it in Romans 9:13. Many readers, applying the idiom, hold that hated here means chosen second, not chosen for destruction, and that Malachi and Paul speak of God's choice of one people, Israel, for a role in his purpose. Others reply that the idiom cannot carry the whole weight, because Romans 9 is about God's freedom to show mercy and to harden (9:18), and that Paul is speaking of God's sovereign choice in salvation itself. That debate, between Calvinist and Arminian readers and others besides, is set out in the Systematic Theology track's lesson Election. The idiom is a real part of the evidence. It does not settle the argument.

Now hear Elizabeth. Mary has come to the hill country of Judah; at her greeting the baby leaps in Elizabeth's womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit (1:41), ἀνεφώνησεν κραυγῇ μεγάλῃ (anephōnēsen kraugē megalē, cried out with a loud cry). Her words are two blessings: Εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξίν (Eulogēmenē sy en gynaixin, blessed are you among women), καὶ εὐλογημένος ὁ καρπὸς τῆς κοιλίας σου (kai eulogēmenos ho karpos tēs koilias sou, and blessed is the fruit of your womb). Neither has a verb for are or is. This is the form of a Hebrew blessing, a word of praise without a verb, and the Septuagint is full of it.

The two participles, εὐλογημένη and εὐλογημένος, are perfect passive participles, feminine and masculine, nominative singular, from εὐλογέω (eulogeō, to bless), the verb whose family gives English the word eulogy. Module 4 taught that the perfect describes a completed action whose result stands. Elizabeth does not wish Mary a blessing; she declares a blessing God has already given and that now remains. The passive voice leaves the one who blesses unnamed, and everyone in the scene knows who it is.

Blessed among women is itself a Hebrew way of saying most blessed. When the Song of Deborah praises Jael, who struck down the enemy general, the BSB renders it Most blessed among women is Jael (Judges 5:24). The book of Judith, which Catholic and Orthodox Christians read as scripture and Protestants as part of the Apocrypha, has the elder Uzziah bless Judith above all women on earth after Israel's deliverance (Judith 13:18). In both stories a woman is praised because God has used her to save his people. Luke's first readers, who knew the Septuagint, would hear Mary placed in that line, with a difference: she has struck down no one. Her part in Israel's deliverance is to bear the child.

The second blessing comes from the covenant. Among the blessings promised for Israel's obedience in Deuteronomy 28:4 is this: The fruit of your womb will be blessed. Elizabeth applies the words to one child, as if the covenant blessing had found the person it was always for. The next verse makes the claim explicit, when she calls Mary the mother of my Lord (1:43), and the scene ends with a third blessing, Blessed is she who has believed (1:45), which praises Mary for her faith.

Christians honour Mary in different ways, and the words of this verse are part of that difference. Catholic and Orthodox Christians join Gabriel's greeting (1:28) and Elizabeth's blessing (1:42) in their prayers to and about her, and see in them the unique honour that she herself foresaw when she said that all generations will call me blessed (1:48). Protestant Christians honour her as the believing servant of the Lord and the model of faith that 1:45 praises, and do not pray to her. On the Greek, all are agreed: the verse calls her uniquely blessed, in the voice of Israel's scriptures, because of the child she carries. What follows from that is a question for theology, not for grammar.

Read your passage in the interlinear, slowly, and listen for anything that sounds strange when the Greek is rendered word for word: answered and said where no one asked, son of or children of, it came about, set his face, a noun and verb of the same family side by side, blessed without a verb, amen at the start of a saying, hate where love less would make sense. On a fresh page headed The accent in my passage, write each one down with its verse and the Greek words.

For each, do two checks. First, find a similar phrase in the Old Testament; your tool's cross references or a search for the English phrase in the BSB will often find it. Second, see how the BSB and two other translations render it, and note whether each translates the idiom literally or gives its meaning. Write one sentence on what the Old Testament background adds, if anything, to how you will explain the phrase.

If your passage has no Semitic idioms at all, that is worth knowing too, and it tells you something about the writer. Write that down, and note the style instead: long sentences or short, joined by and or by for and therefore. Then go back to your Claims to test page and add any phrase you have heard explained in a sermon one word at a time. By the time you reach the capstone of this track, you will have a page for each of the skills of this module, and your passage will have been read for its words, their families, their range and its accent, which is most of what a reader needs to hear what the writer meant.