[B-Greek] What does this mean

Remington186 at aol.com Remington186 at aol.com
Sat Aug 21 05:32:23 EDT 2004


Steven Lo Vullo slovullo at mac.com  
Writes, Fri Aug 20 21:37:05 EDT 2004 

>On Aug 20, 2004, at 6:45 PM, Remington186 at aol.com wrote:
>> And her children (cognates) are: PISTEUMA, PISTEUTIKOS, PISTEUW, 
>>PISTEWS, PISTIKOS, PISTIS, PISTOS, PISTOTHS, PISTOW, KTL 
>>(and the rest).I shouldn't say this in the presence of so many experts but 
the  >>majority of times these are used in the NT the translators totally miss 
the 
>>nuances and tend to call them all 'faith.'

>But PISTEUMA, PISTEUTIKOS, and PISTOTHS are not used in the NT. PISTOW >is 
used only once. And PISTEWS is the genitive singular form of PISTIS. I think >
you will find that many translations do in fact catch the nuances of the words 
that >are used in the NT in their respective contexts.
>Steven Lo Vullo

[RM] A word count from Dr. Robert Young's Analytical Concordance:
PISTEUW KJ, wc: 246. 236 = believe
PISTIKOS KJ, wc: 1 apparently 'pure' [or if from PINW, drinkable, liquid].
PISTIS KJ, wc: 244. 239 = faith
PISTOS KJ, wc: 67. 53 = faithful
PISTOW KJ, wc: 1 = be assured of 
Here Dr. Young finds 559 cognates of PEIQW; of which number, 
90% are represented by three words: 
a little less than 40% = believe
a little more than 40% = faith
and about 10% = faithful
the remaining 10% are plurals and such.
[I did not count the variants with affixes.]
The Eerdman's Analytical Concordance to the RSV does not have a word count 
per se, but seems to make plain, to the diligent, who have hours to count, the 
exact number of each variant.
Interestingly enough, e-Sword lists only 124 words as believe [must be a 
glitch], and has faith and faithful comparable to Dr. Young. 245 and 54, in that 
order.
I realize this is only the King James Version and your point seemed to be, 
'other' translations "do in fact catch the nuances of the words." I am filled 
with doubt.
[I do have dozens of translations, Steven, but my life-long acquaintance with 
the KJV makes it serve me best whether studying the Greek or the English. I 
mean to say, I always have both open whether studying the Greek or the KJ] 

Even though you seem to brush PISTEWS off ["And PISTEWS is the genitive 
singular form of PISTIS."] [they are both feminine singular] have you ever noticed 
how many times it is connected to EK? More than one-fourth of the time. You 
will never find EK and PISTIS together. If the only difference was the case then 
you might imagine [like, for instance, IHSOU and IHSOUS] it only changed for 
agreement and not meaning. Besides, most of the time PISTIS can be translated 
'loyalty.'

Remington Mandel
Hemet, California



More information about the B-Greek mailing list