This short post is just a record of some of the interesting words that are coming out of my Greek reading of the Gospel of Luke. I decided a few weeks ago that I was done with the English, and I was going to fight my way though in the Greek

Geneai – Kin

I always found this word hard to remember in Greek. Its verb form is ‘ginomai’ which means ‘happen’ or ‘begin’ or ‘beget’. It’s noun form is ‘generation’. Mariam says, “Now all geneai will bless me!” This word gets translated as ‘generation’ which is, if you think about it, more of a transliteration than a translation. The exciting thing is that in English, we have a word that comes from the same root, and if you look closely, you can see it: The g becomes a k (voiced->unvoiced guttural, I think), the e becomes an i, the n stays the same, and we have the word ‘kin’. It is a good old fashioned English word that means ‘family.’ So Mariam says, “Now all kinfolk will bless me!” She is making the point that the human family is related.

Spoudes – Speed

Mariam comes to Elisabet meta spoudes – with haste. This is where we get our English word ‘speed’ from. The shepherds (poimenes) also came ‘speeding’ to Bethlehem.

Aspasmos – spastic, greeting

Mariam wonders what type of aspasmos it is when the angel Gabriel turned up in Bethlehem to have a chat with Mariam. Mariam also gives her relative Elisabet aspasmos. The word is translated into English as ‘greeting’, but it sounds like the word ‘spasm’. What’s going on? Indeed, the root word is aspazomai and it probably comes from spao, which means “I draw” or “I pull”. So ‘spastic’ in English means that the muscles are drawn or pulled tight. A ‘spasm’ means the same thing. How does this translate as ‘greeting’? It’s because when you greet someone, you ‘pull’ them into your arms, you ‘draw’ them into your space. Isn’t that a nice word picture? Speaking of arms:

Agkalas – anchor, arms

When Jesus is presented at the temple, Symeon takes Jesus into his agkalas. The word is translated as ‘arms’, but this misses some meaning. In Greek, the gk is pronounced as nk, so the word actually sounds like ‘ankles.’ It turns out that the English words ‘ankle’, ‘angle’, and ‘anchor’ all come from this same root word. It means ‘bend’. The ankles have a bend in them. An anchor must have a bend in it, so it hooks in. Arms are also bent. The idea here is that Symeon is making a cradle by bending his arms, to hold the baby Jesus. I think old-fashioned English might say something about holding the baby in the crook of his arm. Again, it’s a beautiful word picture. This man who knows how to hold a baby properly!