λῆρος

From the study of Luke 24:11

Range of meaning

Silly talk, nonsense, rubbish, trash, humbug. Sometimes also a worthless trinket or bauble. It is a colloquial word of contempt for speech that has no substance.

Against the English

KJV 'idle tales' (so too ESV 'an idle tale', YLT 'idle talk'). BSB, WEB, NIV, NASB and NLT have 'nonsense'. 'Nonsense' is closer. In modern English 'idle tales' sounds like harmless, half-charming storytelling. The Greek is a scornful dismissal.

How it drifted

In 1611 'idle' meant empty or worthless (compare 'every idle word', Matt 12:36), so 'idle tales' meant 'worthless talk'. Today 'idle' suggests leisure or something harmless, and 'tales' suggests stories, so the phrase sounds gentler than the original.

Used elsewhere in the period

Common in classical Greek as a scornful exclamation and noun, especially in comedy (Aristophanes uses λῆρος repeatedly for 'rubbish!') and in Plato's dialogues for empty talk (LSJ). In the Greek Jewish writings, 4 Maccabees 5:11 has the tyrant Antiochus urge the old priest Eleazar to scatter 'the nonsense (λῆρον)' of his reasoning, which he regards as Jewish religious foolishness. W. K. Hobart (1882) claimed it was a medical term for the raving of fever patients and counted it as evidence that the author was 'Luke the physician'. H. J. Cadbury showed that such words are ordinary educated Greek, and the medical argument is now generally set aside.