How Do We Define Greek Words?

I had this archived and thought I would share it here on my blog:

QUOTE

Because we have so much Classical and Koine Greek literature, we have enough occurrences of the common Greek words to see them used in context, and from those many contexts see what they mean.

However, rare words are a little more difficult. If a word doesn’t occur that much, how can we determine what it means?

Part of the answer here is context. If you read a rare word that does not occur with enough frequency to give us a clear understanding of its range of meanings, we have to see if context is sufficiently clear to define the word.

In Classical Greek, scholars use the word’s etymology — the meaning of its parts. Words are made up of morphemes, which are the smallest unit of meaning in a word. For example, in English the suffix “ism” has a specific meaning that separates “baptize” from “baptism.” The same is true in Greek. The problem comes in Koine Greek, because words had sufficiently evolved so that the word’s etymology no longer has any necessary bearing on the meaning of the word, regardless of how many times you have heard a speaker use etymology to illustrate the word. See Don Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies.

But even with all this information, there are some words that defy precise definition. The most famous is in the Lord’s Prayer: “give us this day our επιουσιον bread” (Matt 6:11). Jesus uses an unbelievably strange word that does not occur anywhere else in all Greek literature except for discussions of the Lord’s Prayer. Why he did this, I do not know; I want to ask him that some day. But guesses at the definition include “daily,” “the coming day,” and “for existence” (see footnote on the NET Bible), the later explaining the NLT’s translation, “Give us today the food we need.” END OF QUOTE

It appears to be:

• Usage in other Greek literature
• Context
• And, in some cases, etymology