καθηγητής

From the study of Matthew 23:10

Range of meaning

Formed from kata ('down, along') + hēgeomai ('to lead, guide'), so its root picture is 'one who leads the way'. In Greek of the period it meant:

• a guide who shows the way;
• a private tutor who personally directs a student's education;
• a master teacher whose school or method students follow, especially in philosophy.

It carries more of personal direction and authority over a pupil's development than the general word didaskalos ('teacher'). In modern Greek, kathēgētēs means 'professor'.

Against the English

BSB, NIV, ESV and NRSV say 'instructor', which is accurate but flat. KJV and WEB say 'master', which in 1611 meant a teacher (as in 'schoolmaster') but today suggests an owner or a boss. NASB says 'leader', which keeps the idea of leading the way but drops the teaching. YLT's 'director' comes close to the root idea of guiding someone's path.

How it drifted

The English drift comes through 'master'. The Latin Vulgate used magister (teacher) for both didaskalos in v. 8 and kathēgētēs in v. 10. Tyndale and the KJV followed with 'master', which was then a normal word for a teacher. Over time 'master' has come to mean ruler or slave-owner, so KJV readers may hear a statement about lordship rather than about who teaches and guides the disciples.

Used elsewhere in the period

The word does not occur anywhere else in the New Testament, and the noun is rare or absent in the Septuagint. It is well attested in Greek prose of the period, for example Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch, for teachers and tutors of philosophy and rhetoric. In the papyri (everyday documents preserved in Egypt) it is used of private tutors. A well-known letter (P.Oxy. 930, 2nd–3rd century AD) has a mother worrying because her son's kathēgētēs has left. Bruce Winter (Tyndale Bulletin 42, 1991) drew on this evidence to argue that Matthew means 'tutor' in that sense: the one who personally guides a pupil's whole formation.