[B-Greek] Question Regarding John 4:11 kurios

frjsilver at optonline.net frjsilver at optonline.net
Fri Sep 1 20:00:29 EDT 2006


Dear Friends --

The scriptural KURIOS is informed by two separate semantic trends.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Name of God is represented in consonants only, but it is never pronounced;  we don't know its authentic sound anyway, and we're much safer for that.

But whenever the Name appears, Jewish practice is to say either HA SHEM ('The Name') or else `ADONAY (my Lord).  As a result, the Jewish translators of the Greek 70 pretty consistently rendered the Name as KURIOS, and this, perforce, leaked into the Christian scriptures.

So there's no question that a couple of centuries BC, the designation KURIOS was invested with great reverence by Hellenistic Jews, at least. This is one of the Jewish problems with the Christian scriptures, I suppose:  that Jesus Christ shares the euphemism of the divine Name.

All that notwithstanding, Greek-speaking women (when they're being polite), to this day refer to their husbands as KURIOS and address them as KURIE.  In strictly Modern Greek parlance, KURIOS means simply 'mister', but it's still considered honorific.

Among us orthodox Christians, bishops are often referred to as KUR, an as yet unexplained (to me, at least) apocopation.

I hope this helps a little.

Peace and blessings to all.

Father James Silver



----- Original Message -----
From: James Becknell 
Date: Friday, September 1, 2006 12:18 pm
Subject: [B-Greek] Question Regarding John 4:11 kurios
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org

> I am interested to know if anyone understands why kurios is 
> rendered as
> sir in John 4:11? I understand its use as a title for the 
> purpose of
> formal address, but I was wondering how it is concluded that the
> Samaritan woman is not referring to Jesus as lord, but as sir? Are
> there any other places where this is brought out into English as sir?
> 
> 
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