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Greek Roots · letter 5 of 24

Epsilon

Short e — and the first letter of the word we translate “church.”

How the shape crossed the sea

Phoenician · c. 1000–800 BC

Phoenician he — a figure with both arms thrown up.

Archaic Greek · c. 750–500 BC

A spine and three arms, squared off and turned to face right.

The classical capital · the New Testament's own letters

Every New Testament manuscript was written in capitals like this one — no lower case, and no spaces between the words.

The Phoenician drawing is the same one the Hebrew hall uses for that letter — at this date the two scripts were one alphabet in two neighbouring hands. The archaic Greek form is simplified from published hand-copies of the early inscriptions, not a facsimile of any single stone: early Greek scribes varied wildly, and wrote right to left as readily as left to right.

Sounds like

A short e, as in bed. Never long — that is eta's job.

Written e in scholarly books.

Its number

5

position and number agree here

Its name means

“bare e” — a later Greek label

in Phoenician, not in Greek

Borrowed from

Phoenician he

Well established

Epsilon opens two words that shaped the whole New Testament vocabulary: ekklēsia, which English renders “church,” and euangelion, which English renders “gospel.” Neither was a religious word before Christians got hold of it.

There is also a genuine ancient mystery attached to this letter. A large letter E stood in the temple at Delphi, and by Plutarch's day — writing around AD 100 — nobody could remember what it was for. He wrote a whole essay guessing. Some things about the ancient world are simply lost, and this is one of them.

Where the New Testament uses this letter

“Church” is a town-meeting word

Ekklēsia meant the citizens of a Greek city called out to assemble and decide things. Luke proves the point without meaning to: during the riot at Ephesus he uses the word three times of a pagan mob and a lawful civic assembly, in the same chapter where he uses it of Christians.

So the word does not mean a building, and it does not mean a service. It means the people, summoned.

Good news was an emperor's word first

Euangelion meant the announcement of something big and public — a victory won, an heir born, an emperor enthroned. Inscriptions from the Roman world use it exactly that way. Mark opens his book with it, and puts a different name in the announcement.

Words that begin here

ἐκκλησία

ekklēsia — assembly, church

Literally “called out” — a civic word for citizens summoned to meet.

Open the word→

εὐαγγέλιον

euangelion — good news, gospel

Imperial announcement language, taken over and pointed at someone else.

Open the word→

ἐλπίς

elpis — hope

In Greek it can mean any expectation, good or bad; in the New Testament it is always leaning forward.

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ἐξουσία

exousia — authority, right

Not raw power but the right to act — permission with weight behind it.

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