It is beneficial for students of the Greek New Testament (GNT) to gain at least some exposure to Classical Greek writings and extrabiblical texts so that they obtain a broader understanding of the language itself at large, and not only confining their study to the specific contexts of the Bible. Not least because it actually lends clarity to the reading of the GNT itself.

Not until I began studying Classical Greek did I realize that the words for ‘salvation’ (σωτηρία, sōtēria) and ‘to save’ (σῴζω, sōzō) are part of a word family that contains another word (noted below) that indicates being ‘safe’ and the general idea of ‘safety’, even though this makes perfect sense in the sense of preservation common to them. By comparison, even in English ‘save’ and ‘safe’ are related as they both descend from the Latin word salvus.

The word in question is σωός (sōos) or σῶς (sōs), which does not occur in the New Testament. I encountered it in the context of a sentence indicating that a swimmer on a particular side of an island, because of some treacherous cliffs, would be in great danger and essentially “not be conveyed safe(ly)” (using σῶς) through the waves. The meaning in context was that they would not survive swimming there. I recognized the root of the word and then it just clicked. (Here is the full Liddell Scott Jones lexicon entry for σῶς, alongside several others.) It turns out also that while the word σῶς is not in the canon of Scripture, it is found in the Apocrypha, such as in 2 Maccabees 3:15, 22 and 12:24 (click for the NRSV’s rendition of those verses).

Context, of course, determines the sense of a word, and you can’t transfer all possible meanings of a word’s semantic range into each instance of it. Additionally, not all cognate words in a word family inherently carry each other’s senses — especially as the meaning of words evolve over time. Nonetheless, the related word σῴζω in certain contexts in the New Testament would make perfect sense as preserving someone safe from something, for something, or by means of something. In Romans 5:9 the phrase σωθησόμεθα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς could be conveyed as “we will be kept safe through him from the wrath [of God]”. There is also some debate on the meaning of 1 Timothy 2:15 where it reads σωθήσεται δὲ διὰ τῆς τεκνογονίας, which could be translated “she will be kept safe through child bearing” instead of “she will be saved through child bearing“. I will not enter into arguments over the latter here and which is more likely correct, but want to note a potential case where the sense of being safe is not all that far away from saving.

It is notable too that the Greek BDAG lexicon and certain other GNT lexicons on σῴζω do, in fact, include somewhere in their entries a mention of the meaning of being “safe” or being “brought out safely” (BDAG, 1.b.), amidst the meanings of saving and salvation. Thus it is quite likely that σῴζω has retained some sense of safety, which is present also in σῶς, from its root word. Once one is attuned to the fact that the sense can include safety it could be used as a test of meaning to simply try a form of ‘safe’ as a gloss and see if it makes sense in the context.

Overall, this is yet another win in the category of benefits of reading Classical and extrabiblical Greek for a sharper understanding of Scripture.