Early Christians…
I had to show some restraint in order to start this post off right. I’m excited to talk about a word that jumped out to me recently when I was reading Acts ch. 4. The word is homothumadon. It’s a word used quite frequently in Acts to describe Christians as well as their opponents. The part that I needed restraint on comes from the fact that the two root words are homos (same) and thumos (seat of one’s soul, passion); basically I wanted to title this post: “Early Christians, Passionate Homos?”, and my first line would’ve been “And I hope to be one too.” That’s funny. But maybe unnecessarily obtrusive to what I want to say. Anyway, obviously I don’t have enough restraint to not even talk about it, but what can you do?
To the point.
In Acts 4.23-24ish, the apostles Pete and Johnny narrowly evade a catastrophe after they heal some guy who couldn’t walk. Basically, the religious leaders felt threatened by their teachings to the crowd that gathered following the healing, and so the leaders threatened them in return that they’d better not go on mentioning the name of Jesus or his teachings. Jesus is gone, yet they still have sand in their crack about him. So P & J come back to their friends and share what happened. And this is where it gets interesting:
v.24 says, “When they heard it, they raised their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who…….” and they go into a big prayer together asking for help and boldness and God to take action. But did you catch the amazing thing in the quote?
Neither did I. When I read it, however, for some reason the phrase “raised their voices together” just caught my attention. Randomly? Holy Spirit-ually? I don’t know. But it did stand out.
So I read the sentence in some funky language, and came across that little gem of a word which basically gets swallowed up in our English translation…I mean, I guess we’re left with the word “together”. Well, that’s poop. Because the word is omothumadon, which does not mean mere togetherness. No, no, no… It is made up of two words, which I already briefly explained. But for the sake of redundancy and clarity, I will do it again. But for the sake of redundancy and clarity, I will do it again. (Ha! I will think that’s funny until the day I die.)
homos – We see this word that means “same” all the time. Homo-sapien, Homo-sexual, Homo-genous. Well, maybe we don’t use that last one too often.
thumos – This one is a bit more interesting and potent. This is the seat of one’s soul and one’s passion. Contrary to its meek appearance, it is a volatile word that can describe the origin of the way one might fly off the handle in angry passion, raging against the machine or the man or whatever it is that enrages you. It’s fiery passion. It’s intense. It’s awesome.
So when you cram these two words together, you get an adjective or adverb that means something like “same-passioned” or “fired up together”…or…or…”emphatically, unanimously pissed off”. Sometimes, Peterson gives us “wonderful harmony” in positive situations and a stampeding mob in negative. I like that. So in this verse, the Christians “lifted their voices in a wonderful harmony in prayer”, but in Acts 7.57 “the mob drowned Stephen out. Now in full stampede, they dragged him out of town and pelted him with rocks.”
And it turns out that these early Christians were doing things all the time in a homothumadon kind of way. I mean, just check out Acts 1.14, 2.46, 5.12, 8.6, 15.25 and Romans 15.6 (or look at the bottom of this post where I will list them out). And we read over and over again that they were filled with the Spirit, that they shared, that they were imbued with special gifts, and that they were making an impact on others, enjoying the fact that God was growing the kingdom of God all around them.
Wow. I mean, what if we acted in a homothumadon kind of way? What if, being filled with the Spirit, we were same-passioned?
It sounds beautiful. There have been a couple brief times in my life where I experienced feeling homothumadon with others…sometimes just one person, sometimes a group. And it was always very, very powerful…for me, for us, and for others. And that brings me to where my thoughts often go lately. I long for a same-passioned community. I long to be with people who laugh together, weep together, get pissed off together, cry out to God together in unified passion.
We probably won’t truly get that in a lasting way until we finally come home. But until then, I’d like to think we could pray together with hope that God will fill us with the Holy Spirit, making us homothumadon.
The Cross-references
From the NASB, if you’re into that (and you should be at least for now, b/c it’s one of the few translations that is paying any attention to this special word rather than just muting it in the text):
Acts 1.14 These all with one mind (homothumadon) were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.
Acts 2.46 Day by day continuing with one mind (homothumadon) in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart…
Acts 5.12 At the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people; and they were all with one accord (homothumadon) in Solomon’s portico.
Acts 8.6 The crowds with one accord (homothumadon) were giving attention to what was said by Philip, as they heard and saw the signs which he was performing.
Acts 15.25 it seemed good to us, having become of one mind (homothumadon), to select men to send to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul…
Romans 15.5-6 Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord (homothumadon) you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And if you’re interested in the negative occurrences of this word, you can check out Acts 7.57, 12.20, 18.12, and 19.29. These are mostly verses about angry mobs on the warpath, stampeding over Christians. Which is neat. I mean. Uh. Yeah. No.
And finally, just a random thought for the few that made it this far: when we talk about hetero-(different) and homo-(same) sexuality, what would happen if we introduce the third facet of homoi-(similar). I mean, what the heck is homoisexuality anyway? And I’m done.
That is an excellent post! entertaining and educational. Thank you for sharing. I am a Homo too! Lord save me, I am 53 and by His grace never said that before. Nobody from my church reads this, right? Please stop at my blog and say something smart.
I hope to be back soon and read more. Seriously, that was rich. I have been married 29 years. Homoisexual is what happens after 25 years of marriage, if you are blessed as i am. We have grown to be, well, similar. but as the French say, viva le differance’
Thank you. I’m glad to hear your thoughts. I laughed to think of homoisexual being a couple growing similar. I have only been married 3.5 years, so I look forward to discovering our homoisexuality in that light.
I’ll definitely check out your blog.
chris
[...] something always captures my attention when reading. This time, besides the wonderful homothumadon, I was captured by a brief section in the latter part of ch 3. It made me think of some of my [...]
It’s Time to Catch Your Breath « Elusive Bread said this on Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 7:25 pm |
I’m preparing for a sermon entitled: The Spirit-Filled Church: Compassionate and Passionate Community, based on Acts 2:42-47 and several additional passages. I stumbled across homothumadon and remembered something about fury and fuming. I googled the word and found this blog. Thanks for doing the research for me. And thanks for doing it with humor and passion! This is what I want to preach. This is what many of us long for!
Thanks Phil. I haven’t written here in a while, so it was very encouraging to hear that this was useful to you…makes me want to start writing more again.
Hope your sermon moves people toward something more homo and less mono.
chris
Hey awesome post, but you missed at least on other verse. Acts 2:1, I just started a blog moreofwe.wordpress.com and my first post is on homothumadon in Acts 2:1
I appreciate the sentiment of your post; it is a strong draw to devotion toward God.
While what you are saying is no doubt true, unfortunately I think it’s unlikely that any of the three Greek words you reference are in Acts 2:1 (transliterated, the greek is: kai en tô sumplêrousthai tên hêmeran tês pentêkostês êsan pantes homou epi to auto). I did a little looking though, and it does look like there was a variant reading that used homothumadon instead of homou (which basically means together) and hapas instead of pas (which still means all) in the Textus Receptus, which is the text used to make the King James translation. Strong’s Concordance relies on the KJV/TR, though it’s known for some inaccuracies and changes/additions to the text.
This is one of the challenges of using the KJV; it is not based on the best or most up to date manuscripts, besides the fact it embellishes or adds overt theology not found in the text (like the johannine comma).
Anyway, given the changes in our understanding of the greek text long since the TR, I think it’s very unlikely homothumadon was in the autograph.
Homou just doesn’t have the same kind of punch as homothumadon IMHO.
I guess you can tell I’m no Greek scholar, so thank you for the lesson. Instead of Strong’s do you know a good online resource for a layman to glean from the original languages?
[...] Homothumadon is a more complex word and by splitting it in half and examining the root a much more powerful meaning then one accord is found. Homo means “the same” which is still used in English like homogenize as process that keeps cream from dividing from the milk. So far to review we have – absolutely everyone has the same … thumadon. The root word thuo has a sacrificial connotation and means to rush like in to breathe hard, blow or smoke. Now that we have the root understanding Thumadon means passion as if breathing hard. So to put it together so far “Absolutely everyone has the same sacrificial passion. Everyone has laid down or died to other passions and agenda’s, we are all burning with passion for the presence of God. [...]
The Depth and Passion of One Accord « More of We and Less of Me said this on Saturday, November 28, 2009 at 9:08 am |