Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
John 2:15
A scourge of small cords. The noun occurs once in the New Testament and is a Latin word in Greek dress.
John 2:15, in every translation this tool compares.
English is full of borrowed words you never notice. Restaurant, algebra, ketchup. A borrowed word is a fingerprint of contact between two cultures.
Because the word is a borrowing from Latin, which tells you something about the world the Gospel was written in that no theological point depends on.
Versions read whip or scourge of cords.
φραγέλλιον phragellion · G5416
Phragellion is the Greek spelling of Latin flagellum. It occurs only here in the New Testament. The related verb appears at Matthew 27:26 and Mark 15:15 of the scourging.
English doesn't lose anything here. The point is what the loan word shows about a Greek text written inside a Roman world.
Loan words in a text date and place it. They are evidence about the writer's setting rather than about his meaning.
Whip is what most modern versions print; the King James reads scourge.
- Only occurrence in the New Testament
- Latin flagellum
- The verb phragelloo at Matthew 27:26; Mark 15:15
