One Little Greek Word

   "It was Greek to me", goes the famous line from Shakespeare, a line which most of us have probably repeated at some time, when something seemed totally incomprehensible. Since most of us cannot read Greek as it is written, we must rely on the work of translators in order to read the New Testament, which was originally written in the Greek language.

   Most of the time, the translators' diligent work has brought us accurate, near-verbatim English transcripts of the inspired writings. Occasionally, however, the translators made errors. Some of these errors are well-known, some less so.

  A rather subtle kind of mistranslation is the kind in which a certain part of speech is mistaken for a different part of speech, and the English word used to translate it ends up being a poor choice as a result.

  One example of such a mistranslated word is the Greek word oikourgos, found in Titus 2:5. The word is found in no other verse of Scripture, yet its misrendering in this one place has had a significant impact on the lives of thousands of Christians.

  In the KJV, Titus 2:4-5 reads: "That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home...that the word of God be not blasphemed."

  So, where's the mistranslation? It is in the phrase "keepers at home", a misrendering of the Greek word oikourgos.

  Oikourgos is a compound based on the word oikos, "house" and ergos "to work" (associated, by folk etymology, with ouros "to guard"). It is translated as if it was a noun (many Greek nouns end in -os). However, the -os noun ending is masculine. Since in this context it is referring to women, the masculine ending would not be correct. Therefore we know that the word is not a noun. Instead, the ending is actually a different suffix: -os in its usage as an adjective-forming verbal suffix. This may seem like much ado about nothing, but it significantly alters the meaning, as you will see.

  The KJV translators saw the word oikourgos as a noun, and since it was describing a person, they took it to mean a certain type of person. Since oikos means "house" and urgos (a form of ouros) comes from a root meaning "to keep", they translated it in the KJV as "keepers at home".

   Later translators confused the meaning even further, believing that the lexical meaning of "keep" in that sense was that of "to stay". Therefore, some more modern translations have rendered it as "stayer at home", a still more inaccurate rendering. Even James Strong, compiler of Strong's Concordance, listed "stayer at home" as a rendering of oikourgos. Strong's Concordance has very few errors, but that was one of them.

  So what does the phrase translated "keeper at home" really mean? I'll get to that in a moment. First, we must consider the ramifications of the mistranslation.

  Hundreds of thousands of Christians, reading the KJV and some newer versions, have taken the misrendered phrase "keeper at home" to be equivalent to the modern word "homemaker." Dozens if not hundreds of Christian books, weblogs, articles, radio interviews, etc. have used the phrase "keeper at home" in their titles. They often misunderstand the verse to mean that all Christian women should be "homemakers". The Conservative Mennonite church has actually made a doctrine out of the mistranslation; they teach that married women (even those who do not have children) should not work "outside the home" or "off the farm". They claim to have "found" this doctrine in Titus 2:5, in the phrase "keepers at home".

  So, first, what oikourgos does not mean: It does not mean "homemaker" or "housewife" in the modern sense, as some mistakenly believe it does.

  Nor does it mean "stayer at home". It does not mean that women should "stay at home" and must not be involved in external matters or take any work out of the home.

 Now that you know what oikourgos does NOT mean, we are free to discuss what it does mean. As stated above, the word is a descriptive word, not a noun.

  Oiko-, as you should remember from the above explanation, means house. The form -urgos, a form of ouros, means "to keep". In the case of compound words, it means "taking care to keep something (in good condition)".

  The entire word, oikourgos, then means "mindful (or careful) to keep their houses in good condition". Why? "That the word of God be not blasphemed!" The verse is saying that keeping your house clean, orderly, and in repair is a good witness for the Gospel.

  So you see,  this admonition means something totally different than many Christians believe it does. It has absolutely nothing to do with home economic roles, and everything to do with "public relations" for the Gospel. A disorderly, poorly kept home conveys a lowlife feeling, and speaks poorly for the faith.

  The oikourgos misrendering ("keepers at home") seems primarily confined to the English language. In Spanish, the SBRV version (which is to Spanish what the KJV is to English) renders the Greek word as que tengan cuidado de la casa ("that they care about the state of the house"), a translation far more accurate than the KJV's "keepers at home".

  There is no Biblical support whatsoever for the doctrine, held by Conservative Mennonites and certain others, that women must stay at home or on the farm, and not work outside the so-called "domestic sphere". The virtuous woman, in Proverbs 31, is described as doing eleven things "outside the home". She is involved in agriculture and business, and is even politically active (in Hebrew idiom, the "gates" are a synecdoche for political affairs).

   So now you know...the REST of the story.

09:31 AM - Sunday 18 February 2007 - post comment