A few months ago, I felt the desire to undertake a massive Bible study at home, reading my New Scofield Reference AKJV Bible simultaneously with Rotherham's Emphasized Bible, starting from Genesis 1:1 and going straight through toward Revelation (I'm only in Isaiah 40 now) comparing them verse-by-verse, AND plodding through the legwork of actually looking up most of the cross-references. When I DID do that, I almost ALWAYS made beautiful discoveries and was SOOOOO
glad that I
made myself do it!!!
(I wonder just how much of that activity was
GOD-driven!!! haha! ) Yesterday morning I made the happy discovery in Isaiah 40:9 in Scofield, in the footnote. The footnote read as follows : "In the Septuagint the clause 'that bringest good tidings,' is expressed by
euaggelizo , which in the New Testament is the verb often used for declaring good tidings, or preaching the Gospel. Our words 'evangelize' and 'evangelism' are derived from this Greek verb.
I went to my Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, College Edition (1960), and looked up "gospel". Here's what I found : gospel [ ME (Middle English)
godspell,
gospel (with assimilated -d- ) ; AS (Anglo-Saxon)
godspel . originally good spell, good story, good news ; intended as translation of Greek
euangelion , good tidings, but later by shortening of
o , it became
godspel as if <
god , God +
spel , story, history ] 1. the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles
When I put these two paragraphs together, it makes me think: Jesus came to bring our Father's GOOD NEWS of His beautiful Self and His Righteous ways unto His childrens' awareness, and make us desire
strongly to be
just like Him in character and behavior.
I love studying languages and finding the oft-hidden meanings & origins or words. For example I was delighted years ago to discover that the word "goodbye" is a contraction of "
God be with
ye" ! And the Hawaiian word "aloha" means "Hello" and "Goodbye"..... I like to
KNOW what I am SAYING when I speak!
Does anyone else among you have any other word discoveries that you can share with us all?
Ciao for now!
Linda