Greek Terminology and the Bible
I’ve been listening to a teaching series by Joe Mcgee lately. I learned something really interesting while listening to this series. He was talking about life and migrated over to talking about sin. In Greek terminology, sin was an old archery word. Every archer tried to hit the center of the bulls-eye on the target; or in other words “hit the mark”. The distance from the bulls-eye to where the arrow actually hit was called the “sin”. So, in Greek times this word sin meant you missed the mark by “x” amount or “by this much”.
This means that in the Greek culture, when sin was talked about they instantly gained a mental picture of missing the mark with an arrow. Really interesting. I have always loved metaphors and parables, because they help you really grasp the full meaning of a teaching and continue to remember it long after it has been spoken. So, hopefully this helps you understand another viewpoint of what “sin” was seen as.