Cremer’s dictionary deals with a problem that has not yet been solved, namely, that of NT Greek.
a. This question was already discussed in the early church.34 When the NT was becoming known in the Greek world, the educated attached great value to the writing of good Greek. The NT could not compete with the published literary works of the time.35 Celsus compared the sentences of the Bible with Plato and came to the conclusion that everything was better expressed among the Greeks than in the NT (Orig. Cels., VI, 1). The apostles were uncultured tax-gatherers and fishermen who could not measure up to Greek philosophers (I, 62). Similar objections were constantly raised. How did the church respond to them?
Two arguments were used in defense of the Greek of the NT. First, it was said that the apostles deliberately used simple speech to make themselves generally understood. The preacher’s task is not just to win the clever. Out of love for all men he consciously turns as well to the simple and uneducated, to women and children, even to the uncivilised, in order to convert them. Hence the Christian teacher has to use a language which all can understand and which can captivate all.36
The second argument starts with the fact that the apostles themselves were simple people who could not match the skilled speech of the philosophers. Another reason was thus given for the success of primitive Christian preaching. According to Origen, what won people to Christ was not fine speech or oratorical skill, not the art of dialectic or rhetoric, but Christ himself. If Jesus had chosen clever folk to proclaim his teaching, Christianity might have been taken for a philosophical school. But now that uneducated people, fishermen and tax-gatherers, who did not have even the rudiments of learning, have not only spoken to the Jews with shocking boldness about faith in Christ but also preached Jesus successfully to all nations, one has to ask what is the source of the unparalleled power of their words to convince. The only possible conclusion is that a higher than they has been speaking and that he has endowed their words with persuasive force (Orig.Cels., I, 62 [GCS, 2, 113f.]).[1]
My point is please use simple English to reach out to the unsaved, use NIV please....
34 E. Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa, II5(1958), 521–534; J. Vergote, Art. “Grec biblique” in Dict. Bibl. Suppl., III (1938), 1321–1323.
35 “To use a non-Attic word was a very serious literary offense and a work not adorned with figures of speech had no claim to a place in literature; in short, writing well or badly distinguished Greeks and barbarians. A public of this kind could only regard the religious documents of the Christians as monstrosities,” Norden, op. cit., 516f.
Orig. Origen, of Alexandria (185–254 a.d.), pupil of Clement of Alexandria, and most learned and fruitful representative of ancient Christian scholarship and culture, ed. by different scholars in Die griech, christl. Schriftsteller der ersten 3 Jahrhunderte, 1899 ff.
Cels. Contra Celsum.
36 Orig. Cels., VI, 1 (GCS, 3, 72); Isidore of Pelusium Ep., IV, 67 (MPG, 78, 1124f.).
Orig. Origen, of Alexandria (185–254 a.d.), pupil of Clement of Alexandria, and most learned and fruitful representative of ancient Christian scholarship and culture, ed. by different scholars in Die griech, christl. Schriftsteller der ersten 3 Jahrhunderte, 1899 ff.
Cels. Contra Celsum.
[1]Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 632.
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