γνόφος

From the study of Hebrews 12:18

Range of meaning

Gnophos: thick darkness, the dark storm-cloud. Zophos: murky gloom, in Greek poetry often the darkness of the underworld or the far west.

Against the English

"Blackness, and darkness" (KJV) and "darkness, gloom" (BSB) are reasonable. No English pair keeps the rhyme (gnophō / zophō) or the underworld overtone of zophos.

Used elsewhere in the period

Gnophos is the cloud of God's presence on Sinai: Exod 20:21 ("Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was"), Deut 4:11, 5:22. Zophos is used for the gloom of the underworld in Homer and Hesiod, and in 2 Pet 2:4, 17 and Jude 6, 13. Deut 4:11 in the Greek Old Testament reads skotos, gnophos, thyella ("darkness, thick darkness, storm"). Hebrews keeps gnophos and thyella and appears to swap in zophos, probably for the sound.

From the study of Sirach 45:5

Range of meaning

Darkness, gloom, especially the thick darkness of a storm-cloud. In the Septuagint it usually translates Hebrew ʿarafel, 'thick cloud, heavy darkness.'

Against the English

KJV/Brenton 'the dark cloud' and WEB/NRSV 'thick darkness / dark cloud' are all accurate. 'Cloud' alone (as in some translations from Hebrew or Latin) loses the darkness.

Used elsewhere in the period

Exodus 20:21 (Greek): 'Moses went into the gnophos where God was.' Also Deuteronomy 4:11 and 5:22, and Psalm 17(18):12, 'he made darkness his covering.' Hebrews 12:18 lists gnophos among the terrors of Sinai. Philo (e.g. On the Life of Moses 1.158) already reads Moses' entry into the darkness as entry into the hidden presence of God. Much later Christian writers (Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius) made 'the divine darkness' an image of mystical knowledge.