[B-Greek] QEOS and KURIOS : a strange choice of words?

Alexander Hopkins alexali at surf.net.au
Sat Sep 13 09:53:52 EDT 2003


Ted Shoemaker wrote

>The word QEOS seems generic -- and this for a God who demands
exclusivity.  The Greeks had used QEOS for centuries without referring
to Yahweh.  And KURIOS doesn't even require the concept of Deity: it's
also used where our own English 
would use "boss" or "mister". 

>Would anyone care to speculate about the reasons for these choices of
terms?

In one of the articles published in Herbert Ch. Youtie's Scriptiunculae
Posteriores, Youtie discusses several words which undergo a significant
semantic shift as they were picked up by Christians and imbued with new
meaning. One of these is the word THEOS.  You may find Youtie's article
useful, Ted; I quote part of it in a post some time ago, which may be
seen in our archives at
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/1999-06/31596.html

Alex Hopkins
Melbourne, Australia

PS My apolgies to the list in that some few minutes ago I sent a post in
response to Rod Decker's query about small rho with smooth breathing,
not realising that Carl had already answered this.





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