David Solomon wrote: ↑July 31st, 2017, 8:25 am
Hi Jonathan,
Can you show me some authentic Greek texts where καθόλου is used to indicate a complete person?
I can not but ὁλόκληρος, τέλειος are translated as complete person. That is I want to know that the word καθόλου can also mean that.
I don't know. It's only used once in the Greek New Testament. But I suspect ὁλόκληρος or τέλειος are much more likely to be used to describe a person. And the three words mean different things.
καθόλου means "on the whole" or "in general". If it were used to describe a person, I would think it would mean something like "the person as a whole". But it also feels unlikely as a phrase. I would want to see actual uses of it before speculating.
Trenchard explains
the meaning of the first two. Ὁλόκληρος means "whole and entire in all its parts":
Ὁλόκληρος signifies first, as its etymology declares, that which retains all which was allotted to it at the first (Ezek. 15:5), being thus whole and entire in all its parts (ὁλόκληρος καὶ παντελής, Philo, De Merc. Meret. 1); with nothing necessary for its completeness wanting. Thus Darius would have been well pleased not to have taken Babylon if only Zopyrus, who had maimed himself to carry out the stratagem by which it fell, were ὁλόκληρος still (Plutarch, Reg. et Imper. Apoph.). Again, unhewn stones, as having lost nothing in the process of shaping and polishing, are ὁλόκληροι (Deut. 27:6; 1 Macc. 4:47); perfect weeks are ἑβδομάδες ὁλόκληροι (Lev. 23:15); and a man ἐν ὁλοκλήρῳ δέρματι is ‘in a whole skin’ (Lucian, Philops. 8). We next find ὁλόκληρος expressing that integrity of body, with nothing redundant, nothing deficient (cf. Lev. 21:17-23), which was required of the Levitical priests as a condition of their ministering at the altar, which also might not be wanting in the sacrifices they offered. In both these senses Josephus uses it (Antt. iii. 12. 2); as does Philo continually. It is with him the standing word for this integrity of the priests and of the sacrifice, to the necessity of which he often recurs, seeing in it, and rightly, a mystical significance, and that these are ὁλόκληροι θυσίαι ὁλοκλήρῳ Θεῷ (De Vict. 2; De Vict. Off. 1, ὁλόκληρον καὶ παντελῶς μώμων ἀμέτοχον: De Agricul. 29; De Cherub. 28; cf. Plato, Legg. vi. 759 c). Τέλειος is used by Homer (Il. 1. 66) in the same sense.
It is not long before ὁλόκληρος and ὁλοκληρία, like the Latin ‘integer’ and ‘integritas,’ are transferred from bodily to mental and moral entireness (Suetonius, Claud. 4). The only approach to this in the Apocrypha is Wisd. xv. 3, ὁλόκληρος δικαιοσύνη: but in an interesting and important passage in the Phoedrus of Plato (250 c; cf. Tim. 44 c), ὁλόκληρος expresses the perfection of man before the Fall; I mean, of course, the Fall as Plato contemplated it; when to men, as yet ὁλόκληροι καὶ ἀπαθεῖς κακῶν, were vouchsafed ὁλόκληρα φάσματα, as contrasted with those weak partial glimpses of the Eternal Beauty, which are all that to most men are now vouchsafed. That person then or thing is ὁλόκληρος, which is ‘omnibus numeris absolutus,’ or ἐν μηδενὶ λειπόμενος, as St. James himself (1:4) explains the word.
τέλειος means whole in the sense of "having become mature":
The various applications of τέλειος are all referable to the τέλος, which is its ground. In a natural sense the τέλειοι are the adult, who, having attained the full limits of stature, strength, and mental power within their reach, have in these respects attained their τέλος, as distinguished from the νέοι or παῖδες, young men or boys (Plato, Legg. xi. 929 c; Xenophon, Cyr. viii. 7. 6; Polybius, v. 29. 2). This image of full completed growth, as contrasted with infancy and childhood, underlies the ethical use of τέλειοι by St. Paul, he setting these over against the νήπιοι ἐν Χριστῷ (1 Cor. 2:6; 14:20; Ephes. 4:13, 14; Phil. 3:15; Heb. 5:14; cf. Philo, De Agricul. 2); they correspond in fact to the πατέρες of 1 John 2:13, 14, as distinct from the νεανίσκοι and παιδία. Nor is this ethical use of τέλειος confined to Scripture. The Stoics distinguished the τέλειος in philosophy from the προκόπτων, just as at 1 Chron. 25:8 the τέλειοι are set over against the μανθάνοντες. With the heathen, those also were τέλειοι who had been initiated into the mysteries; for just as the Lord’s Supper was called τὸ τέλειον (Bingham, Christ. Antiquities, i. 4. 3), because there was nothing beyond it, no privilege into which the Christian has not entered, so these τέλειοι of heathen initiation obtained their name as having been now introduced into the latest and crowning mysteries of all.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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