σύμφυτος

From the study of Romans 6:5

Range of meaning

The adjective comes from the verb symphyō, "to grow together, grow into one", built on phyō, "to grow". Its range covers:

• grown together, fused: of things that have knit into one living whole
• innate, inborn, natural: what is part of one's nature from birth
• covered with growth, thickly planted: of land or forest

Against the English

KJV and YLT have "planted together". BSB, WEB, NIV, ESV and NASB have "united". "Planted together" goes back to the Latin Vulgate's complantati, through Tyndale and Geneva. It ties the word to phyton (a plant) or phyteuō (to plant). "United" is correct but colourless: it loses the sense of a living union that grows into one.

How it drifted

The planting reading is old, from the Latin complantati. The word's link with growing things made it natural. But in Greek the root idea is growing into one, not being set in the ground side by side. Modern readers of the KJV picture two seeds buried next to each other. The Greek pictures one organism.

Used elsewhere in the period

• Plato, Phaedrus 246a, likens the soul to the "grown-together" (symphytos) power of a winged team and charioteer: a natural unity.
• Aristotle and later philosophers often use it for what is innate or inborn.
• LXX Amos 9:13: the hills will be symphytoi, covered with growth. LXX Zech 11:2: the "dense" forest.
• 3 Maccabees 3:22 speaks of an "inborn" (symphytos) malice.
• It does not appear anywhere else in the NT.