PISTIS in Josephus

Edgar Krentz ekrentz at lstc.edu
Thu Mar 18 09:10:08 EST 1999


>B-Greekers,
>
>I've started reading Josephus to expand my Greek horizons and I've come
>across something interesting already. Josephus uses PISTIS in a political
>sense in terms of loyalty or allegiance to Rome. I'm wondering if this
>sense of allegiance would be the more prevalent sense of the word rather
>than belief or faith, or is this just a case of one word having more than
>one meaning depending on context?
>
>Steve

I am not surprised at all by this. PISTIS h as a broad range of meanings.
In legal speeches it can mean "proof." In Epictetus it is used of the oath
that a Roman soldier took on entering the militaryk (reference from memory)
= sacramentum in Latin. It is used of fidelity, like EMUNAH in Hebrew. It
can mean trust.

Always to translate it faith, even in the NT, can lead to misinterpretation.


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Edgar Krentz
Professor of New Testament Emeritus
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
1100 E. 55th Street
Chicago, IL 60615  USA
773-256-0752
e-mail: ekrentz at lstc.edu (Office)
        emkrentz at mcs.com (Home)
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