2 - Greek Usage of δíκαιος and cognates

Summary

We can no longer talk about the Greek and Hebrew ‘thought worlds’ as if they were utterly different. Paul and other early Christians used the Greek tongue, and Paul wrote to people living amidst, and many of them native to, Greek culture. Even Palestinian Judaism was influenced by Greece. In our study, then, we must look at contemporary Hellenistic use of δíκαιος etc., as well as at ts-d-q in the Hebrew OT. In the Greek OT there is a high degree of overlap of ts-d-q with δíκαιος and cognates, and this may be partly due to the influence of the Hebrew on the Greek used to render it, a sort of backlash effect. Yet the LXX translators must have thought δíκαιος etc. the appropriate word-group to use, and in fact, as we shall see, they used it with some consistency and sensitivity. This means that what Gentile as well as Jewish readers understood by it must be considered, unless we are to assume that when the early Christians entered their assemblies or read their literature, they put away the normal associations of words, and adopted another set.

THE VERB

It has been claimed that to a contemporary Greek-speaker the most natural meaning of ‘God who justifies the ungodly’ would be ‘God who condemns the ungodly’, because when the verb is used with a personal object it means ‘to treat justly’ (the opposite of ἀδικεĩν). However, Aristotle's use of the passive suggests that the verb may have a neutral sense, though in fact it is mainly used of meting out justice to wrongdoers. Even so, however, there is no clear link with the Pauline use, or with the LXX's vindicatory use.