Day 281 – Luke 20:1 – 21:37

It’s All Greek to Me!

In the movie “My Big, Fat Greek Wedding” Mr. Portokalos says that any word can be traced to its Greek origins. While driving his daughter and her classmates to school one day, the daughter’s friend decides to stump Mr. Portokalos and asks him about a Japanese word: “What about kimono,  Mr. Portokalos?” He thinks for a minute, and then answers her (grammar is taken from the movie itself—read it with a Greek accent): “Kimono is come from the Greek word himona, is mean winter. So, what do you wear in the wintertime to stay warm? A robe. You see: robe, kimono.” This, of course is totally made up! But it’s very funny. Our Greek glogger for the day, Alistair, decided to look at some of the these words in our reading for today to see what the root of the familiar word meant in the original Greek. Here’s Alistair’s blog for today:

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Rather than talk about how Jesus was very clever when answering the Jewish leaders about authority, taxes, resurrection, end signs and the destruction of Jerusalem, what drew my attention were the different groups or titles mentioned in the two chapters.  There are ‘the people’, scribes, elders, Emperor, Messiah, teacher and kings.  I have nothing spiritual or devotional or deep to say about the groups or names, but it has been an interest of mine, since studying Biblical Languages at Bible College, to look at the original Greek word and to find if it is still being used in the English language today.

It might surprise you to find out that:

‘The People’ is λαὸς (laos) from which we get the word ‘Laity’ or the people in church.

‘Scribes’ is γραμματεá¿–ς (grammateis) the original grammar police!

‘Elders’ is πρεσβυτέροις (presbyterios), yes, Presbyterians are in the Bible!  We also get ‘presbyter’ or ‘priest’ from this Greek word.

‘Emperor’ is καίσαρι (kaisari) from which we get ‘Kaisar’.

‘Messiah’ is Χριστὸς (Christos) which is easy.

‘Teacher’ is διδάσκαλε (didaskale) from which we get ‘didactic’ meaning instructive.

‘King’ is βασιλευς (basileus) giving us the word basilica and the name ‘Basil’.

I hope you have found the Greek words as interesting as I do.