Synonyms of the New Testament

r[a


a]llh. The o!sioj, the German ‘fromm,’ is one who

reverences these everlasting sanctities, and owns their

obligation; the word being joined with eu]sebh (2 Macc.

330 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § LXXXVIII.

xii. 45), with eu@orkoj (Plato, Rep. 263 d), with qei?oj (Plu-

tarch, De Def. Orat. 40); more than once set over against

e]pi (Xenophon). Those things are a]nosi, which

violate these everlasting ordinances; for instance, a

Greek regarded the Egyptian custom of marriage between

a brother and sister, still more the Persian between a

mother and son, as ‘incestum’ (incastum), mhdamw?j o!sia

as Plato (Legg. viii. 858 b) calls them, mixtures which no

human laws could ever render other than abominable.

Such, too, would be the omission of the rites of sepulture

by those from whom they were due, when it was possible to

pay them; if Antigone, for instance, in obedience to the

edict of Creon, had suffered the body of her brother to

remain unburied (Sophocles, Antig. 74). What the o!sion

is, and what are its obligations, has never been more

nobly declared than in the words which the poet puts into

her mouth:
ou]de> sqe sa>

khru

non o@nq ] u[perdramei?n (453-5).
Compare an instructive passage in Thucydides, ii. 52,

where i[era<, and o!sia occur together, Plato in like manner

(Legg. ix. 878 b) joining them with one another. This

character of the o!sion as anterior and superior to all

human enactmerts, puts the same antithesis between o!sia

and no as exists between the Latin 'fas' and 'jus.'

When we follow o!sioj to its uses in sacred Greek, we

find it, as was inevitable, gaining in depth and intensity of

meaning; but otherwise true to the sense which it already

had in the classical language. We have a striking testi-

mony for the distinction which, in the minds of the Sep-

tuagint translators at least, existed between it and a!gioj,

in the very noticeable fact, that while o!sioj is used some

thirty times as the rendering of dysHA (Deut. xxxiii. 8;

2 Sam. xxii. 26 Ps. iv. 4), and a!gioj nearly a hundred

§ LXXXVIII. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 331

times as that of wOdqA, (Exod. xix. 6; Nu . vi. 5; Ps. xv.

3), in no single instance is o!sioj used for this, or a!gioj

for that; and the same law holds good, I believe, univer-

sally in the conjugates of these; and, which is perhaps

more remailable still, of the other Greek words which are

rarely and exceptionally employed to render these two,

none which is used for the one is ever used for the other;

thus kaqaro, used for the second of these Hebrew words

(Num. v. 17), is never employed for the first; while, on

the other hand, e]leh (Jer. 12), polue (Exod.

xxxiv. 6), eu]labh(Mic. vii. 2), used for the former, are in

no single instance employed for the latter

!Agioj= wOdqA (on the etymology of which word see the

article in Herzog's Real-Encyclopadie., Heiligkeit Gottes)

and a[gno have been often considered different forms of

one and the same word. At all event, they have in

common that root [AG, reappearing as the Latin ‘sac’ in

‘sacer,’ ‘sancio,’ and many other words. It will thus be

only natural that they should have much in common,

even while they separate off, and occupy provinces of

meaning which are clearly distinguishable one from the

other. !Agioj is a word of rarest use in Attic Greek,

though Porson is certainly in error when he says (on Euri-

pides, Med. 750; and compare Pott, Etymol. Forsch. vol.

iii. p. 577) that it is never used by the tragic poets; for

see AEschylus, Suppl. 851. Its fundamental idea is separa-

tion, and, so to speak, consecration and devotion to the

service of Deity; thus i[ero>n ma, a very holy temple

(Xenophon, Hell. iii. 2. 14); it ever lying in the word, as

in the Latin ‘sacer,’ that this consecration may be as

a]na or a]na (see back, page 16. Note in this

point of view its connexion with a[gh: which last it

may be well to observe is recognized now not as another

form of a@goj, as being indeed no more than the Ionic form

of the same word, but fundamentally distinct (Curtius,

Grundzuge, p. 155 sqq.). But the thought lies very near,

332 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. § LXXXVIII.

that what is set apart from the world and to God, should

separate itself from the world's defilements, and should

share in God's purity; and in this way a!gioj speedily ac-

quires a moral significance. The children of Israel must

be an e@qnoj a!gion, not merely in the sense of being God's

inheritance, a lao>j periou, but as separating them-

selves from the abominations of the heathen nations round

(Lev. xix. 2; xi. 44); while God Himself, as the absolutely

separate from evil, as repelling from Himself every possi-

bility of sin or defilement, and as warring against these

in every one of his creatures,¹ obtains this title of a!gioj by

highest right of all (Lev. x. 3; I Sam. ii. 2; Rev. iii. 7;

iv. 8).

It is somewhat different with a[gno. [Agnei (I Tim.

iv. 12; v. 2) in the Definitions which go by Plato's name

too vaguely and too superficially explained (414 a) eu]la

tw?n pro>j tou>j qeou>j a[marthma

fu: too vaguely also by Clement of Alexandria

as tw?n a[marthma, or again as fronei?n o!sia (Strom.

v. I);² is better defined as e]pi by Suidas

(it is twice joined with swfrosu in the Apostolic Fathers:

Clement of Rome, I Cor. 21; Ignatius, Ephes. 20), as e]leu-

qerij kai> pneu by Phavorinus.

[Agno (joined with a]mi, Clement of Rome, 1 Cor. 29)

is the pure; sometimes only the externally or ceremonially

pure, as in this line of Euripides, a[gno>j ga,

a]ll ] ou] ta>j fre (Orestes, 1604; cf. Hippolytus, 316, 317,

and a[gni as =’expiare,’ Sophocles, Ajax, 640). This

¹ When Quenstedt defines the holiness of God as ‘summa omnis labia

expers in Deo puritas,' this, true as far as it goes, is not exhaustive. One

side of this holiness, namely, its intolerance of unholiness and active war

against it, is not brought out.

² In the vestibule of the temple of AEsculapius at Epidaurus were

inscribed these lines, which rank among the noblest utterances of the

ancient world. They ire quoted by Theophrastus in a surviving frag-

ment of his work, Peri> Eu]sebei:

a[gno>n xrh> naioi?o quwj i]o

e@mmenai: a[gnei