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When [[Jesus]] told [[Pontius Pilate]] that His Kingdom was not of the “[[World|world]]” we see one of five different Greek words found in the New Testament which have all been translated into the single word “[[World|world]]”. The word was ''kosmos'', and it is defined in Strong's Concordance as an “orderly arrangement” and in Thayer's Greek Lexicon it is defined as “an apt and harmonious arrangement or constitution, order, government.”<Ref>Online Bible Concordance, Winterbourne, Ontario, Canada | When [[Jesus]] told [[Pontius Pilate]] that His Kingdom was not of the “[[World|world]]” we see one of five different Greek words found in the New Testament which have all been translated into the single word “[[World|world]]”. The word was ''kosmos'', and it is defined in Strong's Concordance as an “orderly arrangement” and in Thayer's Greek Lexicon it is defined as “an apt and harmonious arrangement or constitution, order, government.”<Ref>Online Bible Concordance, Winterbourne, Ontario, Canada. See Thayers Lexicon.</Ref> | ||
In the 7th century BC the term "kosmos" was used in constitutions to describe the jurisdictional "office of magistrate".<Ref> “For example, a very early constitutional inscription shows that 7th-century Drerus on Crete prohibited tenure of the office of kosmos—a local magistracy—until 10 years had elapsed since a man’s last tenure.) That is a refreshing approach and surely contains some truth. “ The Later Archaic Periods, The rise of the tyrants https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Greece/The-later-Archaic-periods</Ref> In the Greek and Roman view of the term ''[[Kosmos]]'' “... meant originally the discipline of an army, and next the ordered constitution of a state.”<Ref>John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy: Section A: Introduction </Ref> The word came from the Greek “komizo” meaning “to care for, take care of, provide for” or “carry off what is one’s own.” ''Kosmos'' did not mean planet, inhabitable place, or age. | In the 7th century BC the term "kosmos" was used in constitutions to describe the jurisdictional "office of magistrate".<Ref> “For example, a very early constitutional inscription shows that 7th-century Drerus on Crete prohibited tenure of the office of kosmos—a local magistracy—until 10 years had elapsed since a man’s last tenure.) That is a refreshing approach and surely contains some truth. “ The Later Archaic Periods, The rise of the tyrants https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Greece/The-later-Archaic-periods</Ref> In the Greek and Roman view of the term ''[[Kosmos]]'' “... meant originally the discipline of an army, and next the ordered constitution of a state.”<Ref>John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy: Section A: Introduction </Ref> The word came from the Greek “komizo” meaning “to care for, take care of, provide for” or “carry off what is one’s own.” ''Kosmos'' did not mean planet, inhabitable place, or age. | ||
Revision as of 22:25, 18 January 2018
When Jesus told Pontius Pilate that His Kingdom was not of the “world” we see one of five different Greek words found in the New Testament which have all been translated into the single word “world”. The word was kosmos, and it is defined in Strong's Concordance as an “orderly arrangement” and in Thayer's Greek Lexicon it is defined as “an apt and harmonious arrangement or constitution, order, government.”[1]
In the 7th century BC the term "kosmos" was used in constitutions to describe the jurisdictional "office of magistrate".[2] In the Greek and Roman view of the term Kosmos “... meant originally the discipline of an army, and next the ordered constitution of a state.”[3] The word came from the Greek “komizo” meaning “to care for, take care of, provide for” or “carry off what is one’s own.” Kosmos did not mean planet, inhabitable place, or age.
The Constitutional Law of Dreros
The Earliest Surviving Greek Law on Stone
(Circa 650 BCE – 600 BCE)
Meiggs & Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (1969) No. 2 (pp. 2-3 provide the following translation of the law:
- "May God be kind (?). The city has thus decided; when a man has been kosmos, the same man shall not be kosmos again for ten years. If he does act as kosmos, whatever, judgements he gives, he shall owe double, and he shall lose his rights to office, as long as he lives, and whatever he does as kosmos shall be nothing. The swearers shall be the kosmos (.e. the body of kosmoi) and the damioi, and twenty of the city."
Meiggs & Lewis p. 3 provide the following technical commentary on the law:
- "The law forbids the repeated tenure of the office of kosmos, presumably, as elsewhere in Crete, the chief magistracy, before ten years have elapsed. The provision is paralleled at Gortyn[4]... sixth century, and it has generally been explained there by the need to make a break in the financial and legal immunity of a magistrate. The length of time which has to elapse in Dreros, however, suggests strongly that the motive was rather to limit the possibilities of using the office as a stepping-stone to tyranny (the first editors) or to bolster the power of an individual family (Ehrenberg, Willets). "
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.09.47
Reviewed by James Kierstead, Victoria University of Wellington
- The Gortyn Law Code mandates that an heiress can only marry someone outside her phylē[5] once she has exhausted all the options within it (col. 7.50-8.35). For Grote, this was to ensure a rotation of the powerful office of kosmos among all the city’s great families. The kosmos was rotated through the phylai, and the great families needed to be kept within their phylai if the system was not to be circumvented. The system eventually broke down in the fourth century, probably because the phylai were never equal in power, and the most powerful phylai came to find waiting for office intolerable. The Gortynian phylai also sent members to a Council.
- The situation at Dreros is less clear, but a seventh-century inscription (Koerner no. 91) contains the phrase πόλι ἔϝαδε διαλήσασι πυλᾶσι, ‘the city decided after consulting the phylai.’ Grote takes this to imply that representatives from each phylē met in a deliberative Council, which he identifies with the ‘Twenty of the polis’ mentioned in the famous inscription limiting iteration of the office of kosmos (ML 2).
Footnotes
- ↑ Online Bible Concordance, Winterbourne, Ontario, Canada. See Thayers Lexicon.
- ↑ “For example, a very early constitutional inscription shows that 7th-century Drerus on Crete prohibited tenure of the office of kosmos—a local magistracy—until 10 years had elapsed since a man’s last tenure.) That is a refreshing approach and surely contains some truth. “ The Later Archaic Periods, The rise of the tyrants https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Greece/The-later-Archaic-periods
- ↑ John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy: Section A: Introduction
- ↑ Gortyn is an archaeological site on the Mediterranean island of Crete
- ↑ Phyle is an ancient Greek term for clan or tribe. They were usually ruled by a basileus. Some of them can be classified by their geographic location: the Geleontes, the Argadeis, the Hopletes, and the Agikoreis, in Ionia; the Hylleans, the Pamphyles, the Dymanes, in the Dorian region.