Γειωρίσαι

Notes

1. This is the aorist active infinitive of an otherwise unattested verb geiwri/zw, formed from the Hebrew word for proselyte, used as a borrowing in Greek, with the suffix izw. The related noun geiw/ras (see gamma 218) is a borrowing of the technical term גר ("ger") in Hebrew. In Biblical Hebrew, גר means "sojourner", but it comes to mean someone not born Jewish but converted to Judaism (Philo 1.417, Isaiah 14.1), leading to the technical term גיור ("giur", conversion). Hesychius defines the plural as "neighbors joined to Israel from another race, proselytes" (his gamma282, cf. the use by Moses at Exodus 12.19 (cf. 49), to distinguish them from those "born in the land"). The term is discussed in commentaries on Isaiah 14.1 by Eusebius (1.68.4) and Theodoret (5.206f.), and appears in the name of Simon son of (the) Gioras. The word gradually gives way to the Greek synonym, prosh/lutos, as in Matthew 23.15, where Jesus seems to imply discrimination when he attacks the "scribes and Pharisees, ... for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves" (KJV).