The domestic economy which forms the back- ground of Jesus' life, and is assumed in all His dealings with children and in all His allusions to them and their ways, is, of course, the whole- some home-life which hail grown up in Israel under the moulding influence of the revelation of the Old Covenant. Its basis was the passionately affectionate Semitic nature, and no doubt certain modifications had come to it from contact with other civilizations; but its form was determined by the tutelage whicli Jehovah had granted His people. (Cf. Edersheim, Sketches of Jeivish Social Life in the Days of Christ, chs. vi.-ix., and The Life and limes of Jesus the Messiti/i, bk. n. chs. ix. and x. ; also Hastings' DB, articles ' Child,' ' Family.' For later Jewish child-life see Schechter, Studies in Judaism, xii. ; and, above all, L. Low, Die Lebensalter. Cf. also Floss, Das Kind iji Branch und Sitte der Volkcr).
The tender love which the Hebrew parent bore to his child, and the absorbing interest with which he watched and guided its development, doubtless find partial expression in the multi- plicity of designations by which the several stages of childhood are marked in that pictorial language. Besides the general terms for ' son ' (ben) and ' d.iughter ' (bath), eight of these have been noted tracing the child from its birth to its maturity : yeled (fern, yalddh), the 'birthling'; yf'tneh, the 'suckling'; '6lel, the suckling of a larger growth, perhaps the * worrier' ; jjdmul, the 'weanling'; ta^jh, the 'toddler'; 'elem, the 'fat one'; naVir, the 'free one'; i«/i./r, the 'ripe one.' (So Ham- 642, after whom Edersheim, Upp. eltt. p. 1031.
burger, K
This sei matched c
ite v.).
unong which that
'^tui; trukKxl, or pooTttii, or i.r.Tc, , ui .» , . (y-<,3« ;
fiiipix,e> or //.!7pxi; 'tsxnirxos; ♦>£o!.,«,. Ni-..ilfss t" saj, the sequences of such lists cannot be taken too strictly. And equally needless to say, they by no means e.\haust the s> nonymy.
* Those terms which (
• in NT are marked by .an asterisk.
302
CHILDREN
Ale.vion's list, for example, does not contain ev
terms of this class that occur in the Gospel narra
series aflforded by them would run something like this ; ^pi<pc;,
virM, tela?»», <ratin, ^luiifm, t«7j, tiMtiirxes, to which would
need to be added the distinctively feminine Buyaratov, xopiamv
It is not difficult to recognize the general distinctions between these terms. (For the detailed synonj-my see especially Schmidt, i). Synonymik rf. griech. Sprachej c. 69, for the terms belonging distinctively to childhood ; c. 152 for those describ- ing the stages between childhood and maturity ; and c. 47 for some terms denoting youthfulness ; cf. Thayer, Lex. XT, s.r. T«r;)- Ti«>o» (with Its diminutive ructm, Jn 1333 only) is, like vli! and 6uy«Tr(i, used in the Gospels only of relationship, literal or figurative, never of age (for the synonymy of t£«>», viii, and Ta7;, see an interesting discussion by Hohne in Luthardt's ZKWL, 18S2, p. 57 ff. ; and ct. Cremer and Thayer, s.fv.). For the rest, I3pi^i is here, as in post-Homeric Greek in general, distinctively the 'newborn baby ' (1 P 2-), the 'child in the arms' (in Homer it is the unborn child, the embryo, as also often in later Greek, e.g. Lk l"-*"): and .«t/o,- and e^x«ri.y (the NT substitute for 6r,keurfj.K, e>i).a,aj.oO range \rith it as descriptive of early infancy. IhuiiUv is equally distinctively the ' little child,' although its application is somewhat broad : now it is entirely synonMnous with ^piftf (Lk 159.66 etc., Mt 2S etc.. Lk IS'S. 16), and again it designates a little maiden of twelve years of age (Mk S-iI. *^). Its companion diminutive -raiS«^u» is ordinarily employed of a somewhat older 'lad,' and may very well be so used in the only passage where it occurs in the Gospels (Jn 69). The simple Ta7t has a range sufficiently wide to cover all these stages, from infancy itself (e.g. Mt -^^) up to youthful maturity (Hippocrates says up to the age of '21). It designates, says Schmidt (p. 429), 'the child of all ages up to complete young manhood ; -raiSa^fov, the child up to bis first school years; -ra/5iov, exclusively the little child.' Hixfirxcs is the appropriate designation of every stage of youthful maturity from so early an age that ftupccxicv or Ta7i might be inter- changed with it up to so late a period — about 40— that it is on the point of giving way to old age. Of the distinctively feminine terms that occur in the Gospels, ^xp6ivoi is a term of condition rather than of age, and occurs only in connexion with Marv (lit 123, Lk 127) and in the parable of the Ten Virgins (Sit 251. '■ "), and T«/W«>i is emploved onlv in the secondary sense of ' maid-servant ' (Mt 2669 and parallels, Lk 12«). The diminu- tives Suyd-zpiev and xepue-tov, though capable of emploj'raent with quite a wide range, yet naturally imply tenderness of years where tenderness of affection is not obviouslv conveyed by them (e.g. Mk 725, Mt 925 [). Thus it appears that in the narratives of the Gospels there is brought into contact with our Lord every stage of childhood and youth from the cradle to maturity— the babv on its mother's bosom (Lk ISlo), the little child, boy (Mk 92J)'and girl (Mk 725) alike, children of a larger growth (Jq 427, Lk S51), and the maturing youth (Lk 7", Mt i9-0). .