δεισιδαιμονία

From the study of Acts 25:19

Range of meaning

Literally 'fear of divine powers' (from deidō, to fear, and daimōn, a divine being or spirit). In ancient Greek it ran from honest religious reverence, through a people's system of worship, to anxious or excessive religiosity. Which sense applies depends on the speaker and the setting. Daimōn here does not carry the later meaning 'demon'; in ordinary Greek it could refer to gods and divine powers generally.

Against the English

KJV has 'superstition', which sounds insulting and to modern ears suggests lucky charms and irrational fears. BSB, WEB, YLT and most modern versions have 'religion', which is fairer in tone but can suggest a modern 'belief system'. No single English word carries both the respect and the distance the Greek can hold.

How it drifted

The Latin Vulgate rendered it superstitio, a word Romans often used for foreign or excessive religious practice. Early English Bibles carried that over as 'superstition', and the English word has since narrowed further toward irrational belief.

Used elsewhere in the period

Approving or neutral: Polybius (6.56) says that what other peoples reproach, deisidaimonia, is what holds the Roman state together. Josephus preserves Roman documents that exempt Jews from military service 'on account of deisidaimonia' (Antiquities 14.228 and following), a matter-of-fact official use for Jewish religious scruple. He also reports an edict of Claudius telling Jews not to despise the deisidaimoniai of other nations (Antiquities 19.290).

Disapproving: Theophrastus (Characters 16) sketches the 'superstitious man' as a comic figure, and Plutarch's On Superstition treats it as a sickness of fear. Philo also treats it as a distortion of true piety.

In the New Testament: the noun occurs only here. The related adjective appears in Acts 17:22, where Paul calls the Athenians very 'religious', another passage where the word's double edge matters.