BIBLE DICTIONARY + WORD STUDY
How to read this: there is rarely one magic “true meaning” hidden behind an English word. A lexicon records a word’s semantic range. The intended meaning is narrowed by grammar, sentence, author, historical usage and context.
GREEK · G2699
katatomē — mutilation
κατα-τομή, -ῆς, ἡ [in Sm.: Jer.31:37 (κατατέμνω is used in LXX of forbidden mutilations: Lev.21:5, al.) ;] 1. incision. 2. excision, concision, mutilation: in sarcasm, by paronomasia, in contrast to (true) περιτομή (v3), of Judaizing Christians, Php.3:2 (see Lft., in l; Cremer, 883).† (AS)
1 tagged verse occurrence · see every occurrence →(Gr. katatome; i.e., “mutilation”), a term used by Paul contemptuously of those who were zealots for circumcision (Phil. 3:2). Instead of the warning, “Beware of the circumcision” (peritome) i.e., of the party who pressed on Gentile converts the necessity of still observing that ordinance, he says, “Beware of the concision;” as much as to say, “This circumcision which they vaunt of is in Christ only as the gashings and mutilations of idolatrous heathen.”
Source: Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897). Historical dictionary wording reflects the scholarship and language of its era.
