What is "KURIAKOS"?
atombomb at sirius.com
atombomb at sirius.com
Sun May 23 23:26:23 EDT 1999
Ben Crick wrote:
>
> The "church" is defined as hH KURIAKH EKKLHSIA, from Hebrew Q:HaL-YHWH;
> modern Hebrew Q:HiLaT-HaMMa$iYaCh. The English took their word Church
> from KURIAKH, whereas the French took their word Eglise from EKKLHSIA,
> Latin ecclesia.
That wouldn't be quite correct. As I mentioned the other day, our
word church derives from the greek word kyriakon, which is a name for
the church building in Greek even to this day. The following note may
be found in John Ayto's useful "Dictionary of Word Origins" (Arcade:
New York, 1990):
--*church* [OE] Etymologically, a *church* is the 'Lord's house.' Its
ultimate source is Greek *kyrios*... The adjective derived from this
was *kyriakos*, whose use in the phrase 'house of the Lord' led to its
use as a noun, *kyriakon*. The medievlal Greek form, *kyrkon* 'house
of worship' was borrowed into West Germanic as *kirika, producing
eventually German *kirche* and English *church*. The Scots form *kirk*
comes from Old Norse *kirkja*, which in turn was borrowed from Old English.--
On a related usage, it's interesting that the KYPIAKH HMEPA-- our
"Sunday"-- originally referred to the "eighth" day of the week, not to
the Sabbath, as many suppose. Even today, in an uninterrupted usage
that persists from apostolic times, the word for Sunday in Greek is
"Kyriaki"; Saturday is still "Sabbaton"; and this usage is also
reflected in other languages as well (cf. French, Spanish, Italian,
etc). For a scriptural reference to the eighth day, see Jn 20.26; for
kyriakh hmera, Rv 1.10. Below my signature I will post an excerpt
from a classic in liturgical history and theology, discussing this
topic in case anyone is interested. The excerpt is from Alexander
Schmemann, Introduction To Liturgical Theology (2d ed.; Faith Press/St
Vladimirs Seminary: Crestwood, NY) pp. 60-67, 119-121.
Best regards and I hope this will be of interest to you!
John Burnett, MA (OT)
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