Ephesians 2:8

Greek is not my strong suit, but I did have some experience with koine Greek back in the day.


τῇ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι διὰ πίστεως: καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον
The word SOZO is not there.
The Greek word for salvation is "soteria" (σωτηρία).

Damn. You're good, George.
Joe(That's why we love you.)Nation

Awww, shucks, Joe.

Koine Greek, huh? So, if someone pushes you into a time machine and zaps you back to third century Athens . . . you're cool, right?

Not without online access to the Perseus Project.
Besides, a chiton makes me look fat.

For those of you who aren't language nerds, Koine Greek is the Greek which was spoken in Athens after the end of the classical period. Because of the Greco-Madeconian conquest of the Persian empire, Koine Greek became the lingua franca of the Hellenistic world. Athens did not formally participate in the invasion of Asia, so many Athenians took the oppotunity to find employment in the conquered lands. The Greek spoken by them therefore became the Greek of official documents, and of the many petty kingdoms established in the wake of the death of Alexander. Although it did not remain unchanged, essentially Athenian Greek remained the Greek of the Hellenistic world because it was the unifying language of the offcial world. (Aramaic was the most commonly spoken language of western Asia, the true lingua franca--but Koine Greek continued to be the language of "officialdom.") So, when the christians came to write down scripture, they wrote in the Koine version of Greek.

The modern versions of the New Testaments are derived from the "majority" version from the early 4th century--also known as the Byzantine version, and by many other names. Anyone wishing to read the oldest surviving versions of the New Testament will need to be able to read Koine Greek.

Well of course.

According to the Blue Letter Bible, sozo is there in the root form.
σῴζω sōzō
Ephesians 2:8

Good find!

There's no verb in σεσῳσμένοι - in the original sentence the word is used as an adjective. Literallly the σεσῳσμένοι are "those who have been saved". They don't do any saving themselves, so strictly speaking the verb "sozein" "to save" isn't there. "Sozo" is 1st person singular, present, ie "I save".

I was hoping you'd drop by, High Seas.
Thanks for the info.

Always good to see you, George. Did you guys ever find out why the original poster urgently needed to find out about soteria (salvation)?

Bible class homework?