[B-Greek] OIKOS as an extended "family"
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Mon May 2 23:15:23 EDT 2011
Hi, Jeffrey,
It's always hard to prove a negative, but this claim does not pass the smell test. Paul, for example, had co-workers and associates, maybe even in groups of 8-15, but unless these people were blood relations or lived in the same house, I do not think he would call this group an OIKOS. The word was no doubt used in all sorts of metaphorical ways, (e.g. 1 Pet 4:17) but that is a different question.
Why when people want to make a perfectly good point about Church growth they feel compelled to support this point by bringing Greek into it still puzzles me.
Mark L
Φωσφορος
FWSFOROS MARKOS
--- On Mon, 5/2/11, Jeffrey T. Requadt <jeffreyrequadt_list at hotmail.com> wrote:
From: Jeffrey T. Requadt <jeffreyrequadt_list at hotmail.com>
Subject: [B-Greek] OIKOS as an extended "family"
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Monday, May 2, 2011, 7:03 PM
I have been doing a little research into a church growth philosophy, and
they make a big claim about OIKOS as the Greek word for "extended family"
but ALSO denoting "8-15 people in our relational world"-as in co-workers,
close friends, classmates. I have been trying to look in BDAG and LSJ and
find no support for OIKOS as "close relational world" outside of actual
genetic closeness or the ones who live in your household. I.e., not
"extended household" but rather simply "household" (with reference to people
rather than buildings). Is anyone aware of contexts in which such an
"relational world" meaning would make the best sense? I have a feeling I
should relegate this one to the N.T. Greek Urban Legends. But I'm willing to
hear evidence otherwise.
Jeffrey T. Requadt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Teacher, Dietz Elementary School
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
7575 E. Palma St.
Tucson, AZ 85705
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(520) 731-4000
---
B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
B-Greek mailing list
B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list