[B-Greek] Etymology of Kurios

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Wed Jan 25 05:48:29 EST 2006


On Jan 25, 2006, at 1:58 AM, Chris Weimer wrote:

> Does anyone know the etymology of kurios? I'm also curious on how  
> it was
> originally used before the LXX appropriated it for the name YHWH.  
> It doesn't
> seem to parallel the Latin dominus (from domus, house) nor does it  
> seem to
> be the original word for "master" such as master of slaves. Anyone  
> have a
> clue?

I looked into this once long ago, but I've never been able to trace  
the root beyond KUROS a word for "power, might, authority." Yes  
KURIOS is comparable to Latin Dominus and appears in Hellenistic  
Greek to bear that special relationship to DOULOS which in older  
Greek was held by DESPOTHS (from DEMS-POTHS, something like "holding  
power over a household (DEM/DOM)." But there's all too much  
etymological speculation involved in sorting out the usage of KURIOS  
for YHWH; it may be more significant that DOULOS corresponds to  
Hebrew EBheD and that the servant-lord/master relationship shapes or  
bears heavily upon Greek-speaking Judaic religious language. I'm  
rather skeptical that speculation in this area is very useful.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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