derived vs borrowed words in John

I am not very good with etymology. I am reading a good introductory linguistics book called Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory by Victoria Fromkin. When looking at the formulation of etymologies of words, I noticed that there are two types of words. These are called "borrowed" words and "derived" words. I know that a "derived" word is derived from something else within the same language. Cognates are words that are not loans or borrowings. Cognates are words in two or more languages that have been passed down from their parent language to the differential point where the cognates were the same word, or at least the same word root, in an ancestor language. Borrowed words are referred to as loanwords as far as I can remember. I would like to know how I can find out what words in John 1:1-18 are borrowed and derived. Can Logos do this for me? Or is there a linguistic textbook or a commentary out there that does this analysis?

Edit for clarity. I think this question requires a backlog of my understanding if not necessary please remove. Further, if any of my definitions are invalid or messy please correct me.

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MJ. Smith

[quote]The articles on loan-words are put in brackets (and so with loan-words throughout). Of these words 161 are by-forms, 480 root-words; and of 134 of the latter the originals can be given. The Persian equivalents I owe to Mr. Redhouse, the Hebrew and Aramaic to Dr. M. Friedländer: the Coptic is from Peyron.

Edward Ross Wharton, Etyma Graeca: An Etymological Lexicon of Classical Greek (London: Percival and Co., 1890), vi.

Note that Persian is an Indo-European language which means it normally has cognates. I "guess" that the lexicon distinguishes between words that follow the usual phonetic rules that historically affected the cognates and treats the words that don't follow the phonetic rules as loan words.

Also note that compared to many other PIE languages, a substratum of languages spoken before PIE moved into the peninsula has a substantial effect on the language and complicates the identification of loan words. Pre-Greek substrate - Wikipedia

Explore Etymonline - Online Etymology Dictionary for examples in English which give you a good sense of the processes.

Christian Alexander

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1301548#Comment_1301548

Thanks for the hit to Etyma Graeca: An Etymological Lexicon of Classical Greek. This is very helpful and so is the Online Etymology Dictionary. It seems to be very exhaustive. Is there a similar source for Greek that does the same?

Christian Alexander

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1301579#Comment_1301579

I rented this source Etyma Graeca from the Internet Archive. Someone on the forums sent me to that website before. It is a beautiful source. However I do not find an entry for λόγος or ἀλήθεια in the source MJ referenced above. I found all other terms I was looking at. Am I overlooking it? Someone told me that the first term λόγος was found originally in Heraclitus but could not provide references. That is not quite what I want to analyze. I am looking to find out who the first Christian or theologian to use it the way John's Gospel does it. This person also referred me to a dictionary cited below. Jeffrey, David Lyle. A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1992. I placed it on interlibrary loan hold at my local library and I am not sure status yet. Does it have anything important for my study I am currently embarking on? I am studying these Greek words ἀλήθεια λόγος and σκηνόω.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1301583#Comment_1301583

Regarding logos and first [recorded/retained] use, I assume you mean not the 1st John writer.

Both Clement and Ignatus make heavy use, but not demonstrably as John used. The earliest clear use for Ignatus would be Magnesians 8.2. Followed by multiple instances in Dionetus (eg 11.2).

The method for locating, is to look at each Fathers instance. The more frequent usage is 'message' or 'account' from God, vs personage.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1301583#Comment_1301583

[quote]

LOGOS Logos is the ordinary Greek word for “word”; there is nothing special about most of its biblical uses. But sometimes in Greek it has a meaning different from that of its English equivalent. The Greeks distinguished between the logos prophorikos (the word uttered) and the logos endiathetos (the word remaining within); the Stoics also spoke of the logos spermatikos, the “seminal” word, which is not so important for biblical tradition but figures importantly in the writings of Neoplatonists.
The logosendiathetos, the word which remains within a person, is something like reason. Some of the Greek philosophers, notably Heraclitus and the Stoics, thought of a logos in the universe, something like a world soul—a rational principle which runs through all that is. They did not conceive of it as personal, but rather as an ordering principle which accounts for the rationality they perceived in nature; a suggestion of agency, however, is discernible in Heraclitus: “Regarded as the Logos, God is the omnipresent Wisdom by which all things are steered” (cited in J. Adam, The Religious Teachers of Greece [1909], 233).
Jewish writers did not use “word” in quite the same way as the Greeks. They employed the term, along with other concepts like “Wisdom” and “the Law,” in semipersonalizations, such as the association of Wisdom with God in the creation process (Prov. 8:22–31). The Word could mean much the same thing as the Law, as the parallelism in Isa. 2:3 (cf. Mic. 4:2) shows. The writer of the Wisdom of Solomon speaks of “thy all-powerful word” as leaping “from heaven, from the royal throne … a stern warrior … [which] touched heaven while standing on the earth” (Wisd. 18:15). The Alexandrian Philo uses the concept of the logos frequently, and can even speak of the logos as “God” or his agency (though guarding the concept that there is only one true God) in terms recalling the demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus. In some Targums the Aramaic term Memra is used as a periphrasis for God. While this is not identical with the Heraclitan logos or that of Philo, it also associates “Word” with deity.
All these terms form the backound for St. John’s use of Logos as a designation of Christ (John 1:1, 14; cf. Rev. 19:13). John’s Logos goes beyond anything else in the NT, though there are approximations in other NT writers. Thus St. Luke makes little distinction between preaching the word and preaching Jesus (e.g., Acts 8:4; 11:20) and in his reference to “eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word” (Luke 1:2) he is certainly speaking of the person as well as the words and actions of Jesus. St. Paul speaks of “the word of God” as “the mystery” and of “this mystery” as “Christ in you” (Col. 1:25–27). John thus makes explicit in a powerful trope what is suggested elsewhere in the NT, that Christ must be seen as not less close to God than his very thought or utterance (John 1:1–14).
The amenability of this idea (esp. as formulated in John’s Gospel, but see also Col. 1:12–19) to the language of Philo, the Timaeus, and also some of the Neoplatonists has undoubtedly had an impact on Western representations of the Logos. In his commentary on Ps. 45 St. Augustine talks about the eternal unity of the Logos (verbum) comprising all that is creation, past, present, and to come, yet fully to be identified with “the Word from the beginning” as uttered in Christ. “In the Word itself are all the works of God [nec esset in rebus, nisi esset in verbo],” he writes:

For whatever God designed to make in the creation already existed in “the Word”; and would not exist in the reality, had it not existed in the Word, just as with you the thing would not exist in the building, had it not existed in your design: even as it is said in the Gospel: “That which was made in Him was life.” That which was made then was in existence; but it had its existence in the Word: and all the works of God existed there, and yet were not as yet “works.” “The Word” however already WAS, as this “Word was God, and was with God”: and was the Son of God, and One God with the Father. “I speak of the things I have made unto the King.” Let him hear Him “speaking,” who apprehends “the Word”: and let him see together with the Father the Everlasting Word; in whom exist even those things that are yet to come: in whom even those things that are past have not passed away. These “works” of God are in “the Word,” as in the Word, as in the Only-Begotten, as in the “Word of God.” (Enarr. in Ps. 45.5)

St. Jerome is likewise aware of the changing status of the word logos, including its tendency among later Stoics and Neoplatonists to acquire associations from Plato’s demiurge in the Timaeus which make it function more like a gerund, or verbal, than a noun. Jerome says, however, that failure to identify the Logos with Christ as the active utterance of God in Christ is the signal inadequacy in Greek philosophy:

Logos in greek has many meanings. It signifies word and reason and reckoning and the cause of individual things by which those which are subsist. All of which things we rightly predicate of Christ. This truth Plato with all his learning did not know, of this Demosthenes with all his eloquence was ignorant. (Ep. 53, “To Paulinus”)

Early translators from the Greek, like Jerome, are frustrated by the inadequacy of any single Latin word to convey the complexity and transitive, dynamic power they feel to be expressed in the Johannine Logos. The Vg “In principium erat verbum” (John 1:1) is constrained to use, however, the inadequate noun (verbum) for “word.” Later romance language translations are advantaged by the development (from their Gallic component) of non-Latin words for “noun” (e.g., Fr. le môt), freeing the distinctive sense of Logos to be associated with Lat. verbum. Verbum then typically enters those languages in the Middle Ages to signify, as in English, the “verb” (e.g., Fr. verbe; Span. verba).
Reformation translators took another approach: Luther’s German NT rejects Zeitwort (“verb”) for the more static noun: “Im Anfang war das Wort” (though commentators in the Reformation tradition have repeatedly turned to expressions such as “the living Word” to try to recapture something of the dynamic, transitive sense of Logos in John 1:1–14 felt by Augustine, Jerome, and others.
The Neoplatonic logos spermatikos returns to complicate matters in Renaissance Neoplatonism. In Cudworth’s The Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), the famous Cambridge Neoplatonist takes up the nonbiblical logos spermatikos or rationes seminales, anticipating in so doing the “plastic nature” concept of Romantic thinkers, including the German idealists. Coleridge, who began his intellectual life under the influence of such thinkers, expresses a rather woolly notion of the Johannine Logos in his “Consciones ad Populam” (1796). By 1803, endeavoring to articulate a clearer theory of the Logos, he proposed to write a Logosophia, a “history of logic.” By 1814, when he had moved away from Unitarianism toward Christian orthodoxy, his working title was Christianity, the one true Philosophy—Five Treatises on the Logos, or Communicative Intelligence, Natural, Human, and Divine. Of these, the third “treatise,” Logos Theanthropos, was to be a systematic commentary on the Gospel of John (Collected Letters, 3.533; 4.687).
Coleridge’s manuscript was still in disarray at his death, though it is soon, at last, to be published. It would appear that his later efforts, to which he says he saw his whole corpus of poetry as a propaedeutic, were to “re-Christianize” an “idealized” or neoplatonized logos, returning it to communication of the orthodox NT usage (Collected Works, The Friend, 1.316n.). In his Biographia Literaria (1817), however, he still speaks of the Logos as the “communicative intellect in man and the deity” (chap. 13; cf. 12.9)—a formulation with which neither Augustine nor Luther would likely have been comfortable.
Association of the Logos with the Second Person of the Trinity, as is met with, e.g., in David Jones’s Anathemata (7.221), John Donne’s Holy Sonnet, “Temple,” or in Milton’s Paradise Lost, is normative to Western Christian usage. The choice of Goethe’s Faust when translating John 1:1 (he rejects in turn das Wort, der Sinn [mind], die Kraft [power], before choosing the depersonalized die Tat [“the Act”]) is self-consciously a rejection of the orthodox connection. It accurately anticipates, however, developments in Romantic and post-Romantic literary theory. (Byron’s free citation of John 1:1–3 at the beginning of his bizarre poem Morgante Maggiore is harder to categorize.) The “logo-centrism” characterized by Derrida and other poststructuralists as a nominal Christian “worship of the word” is defined by them in terms which trace in fact to post-Romantic rather than biblical or particularly Christian lineage.
See also WORD OF GOD.
Biblioaphy. Arnold, M. “The Logos Metaphor in Milton’s Epics.” DAI 34 (1974), 2546A; Barfield, O. What Coleridge Thought (1971); Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (1965); Blodgett, E. D., and H. G. Coward. Science, the Word, and the Sacred (1989); Freccero, J. “Dante’s Medusa: Allegory and Autobiography.” In By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought. Ed. D. L. Jeffrey (1979), 33-46; Jeffrey, D. L. “Breaking Up the Synthesis: From Plato’s Academy to the ‘School of Athens’“ In By Things Seen, 227-52; “Mistakenly Logocentric: Centering Poetic Language in a Scriptural Tradition.” Religion and Literature 22 (1990), 33-46.
DAVID L. JEFFREY
LEON MORRIS

Enarr. in Ps. Enarrationes in Psalmos

Vg Vulgate

Fr. French

Lat. Latin

Fr. French

DAI Dissertation Abstracts
International

DAVID L. JEFFREY University of Ottawa

LEON MORRIS Ridley College (Melbourne)

David L. Jeffrey, A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992).

DMB

One of the quick ways to scan an author usage, is to search the lexicon. In BDAG's case, it abbreviates 'loanw.' and then a NEAR Bible:"John" as an example. It also illustrates the issue of loan to who (in most cases Rabbinical).

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1301583#Comment_1301583

While you have to verify its answers, you can get starting points from Gemini

I asked:

[quote]What is the etymology of the Greek logos? Does it come from PIE or a Greek substratum? When and in what work is it first attested? Does it have multiple senses?

Gemini responded:

[quote]

The word "logos" comes from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *leg-, which means "to collect, gather." This root shows up in many Indo-European languages, so it predates Greek itself.

Here's a breakdown of your questions:

Origin: PIE root *leg-
First Attestation: The exact work is unknown, but archaeological evidence suggests words derived from this root were used in written Greek as early as the 8th century BC.
Multiple Senses: Absolutely! Logos has a rich history and multiple meanings, including:
- Word, discourse, speech
- Reason, thought, logic
- Account, reckoning
- In mathematics, ratio

It's interesting to note that "logos" was contrasted with "mythos" in classical Greek. Logos represented reasoned argument, while mythos referred to imaginative tales.

and from Beekes:[quote]

λέγω [v.] ‘to collect, gather’ (Il.; Att. prose only with prefix), ‘to count, recount’ (Il.), ‘say’ (post-Hom.). On use, mg. and inflexion see Fournier 1946: 53ff., 100ff., Chantraine BSL 41 (1940–1941): 39ff., Wackernagel 1916: 220ff. Beside it stand the synonymous and suppletive verbs ἀγορεύω, φημί, εἰπεῖν, ἐρῶ, εἴρηκα (see Seiler Glotta 32 (1952): 154f.). «IE *leǵ- ‘collect’»

•VAR Aor. λέξαι, -ασθαι, (epic ἐλέγμην, λέκτο), pass. λεχθῆναι, fut. λέξω, -ομαι, perf. λέλεγμαι, δι-είλεγμαι, συν-είλοχα (ει analogical).

•COMP Very often with prefixes like δια-, ἐκ-, ἐπι-, κατα-, συν-.

•DER 1. λόγος [m.] ‘computation, account, esteem, reason; speech, word, statement’ (Ο 393, α 56); see Fournier 1946: 217ff., Boeder Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 4 (1959): 82ff.; also from prefixed compounds, e.g. διά-, κατά-, ἐπί-, σύλ-λογος (to διαλέγομαι, etc.), also in hypostases like ἀνά-, παρά-λογος (to ἀνὰ, παρὰ λόγον).

From λόγος: a. diminutives: λογ-ίδιον, -άριον (Att.), -αρίδιον (pap.). b. adjectives: λογάς [m., f.] ‘selected’, substantivized ‘choice soldier, etc.’ (IA), semantically rather to λέγω, cf. Chantraine 1933: 351; λόγιος ‘notable’ (Pi., etc.), τὸ λόγιον ‘oracle’ (IA); on the development of mg. E. Orth, Logios (Leipzig 1926); λόγιμος ‘worth mention, notable’ (Hdt., pap.), usually ἐλλόγιμος (to ἐν λόγῳ); λογικός ‘regarding reason, etc., logical’ (Philol., Hell.); λογαῖος ‘chosen’ (Str. 1, 3, 18; after Ibyc. 22), perhaps to λογή, see 2.; c. λογάδην [adv.] ‘by accidental selection’ (Th.; cf. λογάς). d. substantives: λογεύς [m.] ‘orator, prose writer’ (Critias, Plu., sch.) with λογεῖον ‘speakers’ place, scene’ (Delos IIIa); κατα-, ἐκ-, συλ-λογεύς from κατάλογος, ἐκλογή, etc.; e. verbs: λογίζομαι [v.] ‘to count, calculate, consider, estimate’ (IA), often with prefix, ἀνα-, etc., with λογ-ισμός, -ισμα, -ιστής, -ιστεύω, -ιστικός, etc.; λογεύω [v.] ‘to collect taxes’, also with ἐπι-, ἐκ-, (pap., inscr.), with λογεία, λόγ-ευμα, -ευτής, -ευτήριον.

2. λογή [f.] ‘reasoning, way’ (= MoGr.; only late pap.; LSJ and DELG translate ‘attention, heed’); isolated from compounds with ἐκ-, κατα-, συν-, δια-, etc. (IA, etc.)?

3. λέξις [f.] ‘reason, way of speech, diction, style, (specific) word, phrase’, also with δια-, ἐκ-, κατα-, (Att., etc.); thence λεξίδιον, -εί- (Arr., Gal.), Lat. lexīdium; see Leumann Sprache 1 (1949): 205; λεξικόν (scil. βιβλίον) ‘containing λέξεις, lexicon’ (AB, Phot.).

4. λέγμα· τὸ εἰπεῖν ‘speaking’ (H.), ἐπίλεγμα ‘excerpt’ (pap.), κατά-λεγμα ‘tragic song’ (Sm., Al.), cf. καταλέγεσθαι· ὀδύρεσθαι τὸν τεθνεῶτα ‘to bewail the deceased’ (H.).

5. διάλεκτος (to δια-λέγομαι) ‘speech, dialect’ (IA) with (δια-, ἐκ-)λεκτικός ‘capable of speaking, etc.’ (Att., etc.: λέξις, λέγω).

•ETYM The thematic root present λέγω, from which all stem forms and nominal derivatives are derived, is identical with Lat. legō ‘to collect, etc.’. Also related is Alb. mb-ledh ‘to collect, harvest’, which points to a palatal -ǵ-. A synonymous root *les- is found in Germanic, Baltic, and Hittite, e.g. MoHG lesen, Go. lisan ‘to collect, harvest’, Lith. lèsti, isg. lesù ‘to pick, eat picking’ (beside lasýti ‘to collect, select’), Hitt. lešš-zi / lišš- ‘to pick, gather’, (Hitt. līšāe-zi is unclear; cf. Kloekhorst 2008 s.v.), but the relation between *les- and *leǵ- is unclear. See ►λώγη.

[ grammatical information is given between square brackets

v. verb

] grammatical information is given between square brackets

Il. Iliad

Att. Attic

Il. Iliad

post-Hom. post-Homeric

BSL Bulletin de la Societé Linguistique de Paris

« the origin of the word

IE There is a good Indo-European (IE) etymology. The IE root is reconstructed, and in most cases also the formation represented by the Greek etymon. If there are no cognates, but the Greek word looks Indo-European, a reconstruction has sometimes been proposed, too.

* a reconstructed item of a proto-stage

» the origin of the word

• Inflectional forms and phonological variants.

VAR Inflectional forms and phonological variants.

Aor. aorist

epic Epicus

pass. passive

fut. future

perf. perfect

• Compounds (only the most common or etymologically relevant compounds are given).

COMP Compounds (only the most common or etymologically relevant compounds are given).

• Derivatives.

DER Derivatives.

[ grammatical information is given between square brackets

m. masculine

] grammatical information is given between square brackets

e.g. for example

Att. Attic

[ grammatical information is given between square brackets

m. masculine

f. feminine

] grammatical information is given between square brackets

IA Ionic-Attic

cf. compare

Pi. Pindarus

IA Ionic-Attic

E. Euripides

Hdt. Herodotus

Philol. Philolaus

Str. Strabo

[ grammatical information is given between square brackets

adv. adverb

] grammatical information is given between square brackets

Th. Thucydides

cf. compare

[ grammatical information is given between square brackets

m. masculine

] grammatical information is given between square brackets

[ grammatical information is given between square brackets

v. verb

] grammatical information is given between square brackets

IA Ionic-Attic

[ grammatical information is given between square brackets

v. verb

] grammatical information is given between square brackets

inscr. inscription(s)

[ grammatical information is given between square brackets

f. feminine

] grammatical information is given between square brackets

LSJ A Greek-English lexicon, compiled by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott; revised and augmented throughout by Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie, and with the co-operation of many scholars. Oxford, 19779.

DELG Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: histoire des mots (terminé par O. Masson, J.-L. Perpillou, J. Taillardat, avec le concours de F. Bader, J. Irigoin, D. Lecco, P. Monteil, sous la dir. de M. Lejeune). Paris, 1968–1980.

IA Ionic-Attic

[ grammatical information is given between square brackets

f. feminine

] grammatical information is given between square brackets

Att. Attic

Gal. Galenus

Lat. Latin

AB Anecdota Graeca, v. I

H. Hesychius

Sm. Symmachus

cf. compare

H. Hesychius

IA Ionic-Attic

Att. Attic

• Etymological discussion.

ETYM Etymological discussion.

Lat. Latin

Alb. Albanian

* a reconstructed item of a proto-stage

e.g. for example

MoHG Modern High German

Go. Gothic

Lith. Lithuanian

Hitt. Hittite

cf. compare

s.v. sub voce

* a reconstructed item of a proto-stage

► see s.v.

Robert Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, ed. Alexander Lubotsky, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010), 841–842.