Greek word · G4372
πρόσφατος
prosphatos
new
Fresh, recent, newly made, new. In the oldest Greek it could describe a body "freshly slain" (Homer, Iliad 24.757, of Hector's corpse). In later Greek it simply means "recent" or "fresh".
Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·
What it means
πρόσφατος, -ον
(on the derivation, see Boisacq, see word and cf. -ως), [in LXX: Numbers 6:3 (לַח), Deuteronomy 32:17, Ecclesiastes 1:9 (חָדָשׁ), Psalms 81:9 (זוּר), Sirach 9:10 * ;]
1. originally, freshly slain.
2. Generally (from Æsch. on), new, fresh, recent: ὁδός, Hebrews 10:20 (see MM, Exp., xxi; Rutherford, NPhr., 471 f.).†
(AS)
From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
From the study of Hebrews 10:20
- Range of meaning
Fresh, recent, newly made, new. In the oldest Greek it could describe a body "freshly slain" (Homer, Iliad 24.757, of Hector's corpse). In later Greek it simply means "recent" or "fresh".
- Against the English
All the major versions say "new". That is right, though "fresh" or "recently opened" catches the sense of something that has only just come into being.
- How it drifted
None in the English. The drift is in popular teaching, which reads the word's ancient root ("newly slain") back into Hebrews.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Greek Old Testament: "fresh grapes" (Num 6:3); "new" gods that had lately appeared (Deut 32:17); "there shall be no new [foreign] god among you" (Ps 81:9 [80:10 Greek]); "there is nothing new under the sun" (Eccl 1:9); "a new friend" compared with an old one (Sir 9:10). None of these involves killing.
Similar words
Where it appears
Hebrews · 1
-
Hebrews 10:20 πρόσφατον new
by the new and living way opened for us through the curtain of His body,
Here: "Fresh, recently made": a way that did not exist before and has only just been opened, unlike the old, long-established arrangement. This is its only use in the New Testament.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.