Holy: Understanding it Better Through Digging (like an archaeologist)

It is unbelievable some days what I discover through digging through old books rather than old rocks.  I consider what I am doing a little like digging through the layers that archaeologists dig through and indicate in their photos.  Today, I found another incredible discovery.  It is a book by John August Henry Tittmann.  Its title is: Remarks on the Synonyms of the New Testament. 

It is an older book, but I am not ashamed to say that I like digging through the old as well as the new.  What I have found is that many things obvious to previous generations have been lost due to a simple bias against the old.  In this case of trying to discern the meaning of holy, it is a bias against older scholarship.  I think instead what scholars, students, and pastors should do instead, is dig through the older layers and recognize all the layers in the process, not just the top soil of our present time.   John A. L. Lee's work on lexicography shows how danger it can be to operate without a knowledge of layers and a blind trust in authority rather than trust and verify. 

Here is a link to what this older scholar, Tittmann, has to say, so you can dig for yourself a bit:  http://openlibrary.org/books/OL23329406M/Remarks_on_the_synonyms_of_the_New_Testament.  Check out especially pages 35-46.  And also if you really want to get right to the heart of what holy means, you can examine pages 45-46 for  his summary. 

If I may summarize what he says here, he says: "hagios (Greek) is that which, on account of integrity of mind and morals, is sacred to God and revered."  What is most interesting to me in my investigations is his use of "integrity ... of morals".  This would fit very well with the idea of "moral wholeness".  But perhaps what is more valuable is that he also places purity and being set apart alongside of his "integrity of morals".  He says that "ieros" (Greek) has a connection with the idea of "consecrated to, or set apart for God".  He also adds that katharis (Greek) is connected to the idea of "pure" as would also "agnos" (Greek). 

If you read what he says carefully, then you can see its parallelism with the proposal (by Andrew Murray many years later), that there are other possible words for being set apart rather than the words qadosh (Hebrew) or hagios (Greek).  This proposal is worth considering and I must give credit to Richard Trench for his volume on synonyms for alerting me to this once renowned scholar.  Its it too bad that often awareness gets buried by generations and time?  I rejoice in another discovery and another opportunity to make people aware and bring knowledge to a sometimes darkened world.  Digging has its rewards!


In Christ,

Jon