Greek word · G5385
φιλοσοφία
philosophia
philosophy
Literally "love of wisdom." In the Hellenistic and Roman period it meant any organised body of teaching about God or the gods, the universe and the right way to live. Disciplines often came with it: diet, celibacy, ritual, contemplation.
Appears once in the Greek New Testament.
What it means
Φιλο-σοφία, -ας, ἡ
(φιλόσοφος), [in LXX: 4Ma.1:1 4Mac 5:10 4Mac 5:22 4Mac 7:9 4Mac 7:21 * ;]
the love and pursuit of wisdom; hence, philosophy, investigation of truth and nature: of the so-called philosophy of false teachers, Colossians 2:8 (see Lft., ICC, in l).†
(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 Colossians 2:8
- Range of meaning
Literally "love of wisdom." In the Hellenistic and Roman period it meant any organised body of teaching about God or the gods, the universe and the right way to live. Disciplines often came with it: diet, celibacy, ritual, contemplation. Schools such as the Stoics, Epicureans and Pythagoreans were "philosophies," but so were religious movements.
- Against the English
Modern English "philosophy" usually means an academic discipline of rational argument, or loosely "a personal outlook." Neither matches the first-century sense of a whole teaching and way of life, often religious. The NLT's plural "empty philosophies" widens Paul's single "the philosophy" into a general category.
- How it drifted
From the Enlightenment onward, philosophy separated from religion and became a university subject. Readers then heard Paul as setting faith against reason.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Jewish writers in Greek routinely called Judaism a philosophy. In 4 Maccabees 5:11 and 5:22 the Greek-Syrian king Antiochus mocks the Jewish law as a "philosophy" and Eleazar defends it as one. Philo calls synagogue teaching the "ancestral philosophy" (Embassy to Gaius 156). Josephus describes Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes as the Jews' "three philosophies" (Antiquities 18.11; War 2.119). The word is a hapax in the NT, meaning it appears only here.
Similar words
Where it appears
Colossians · 1
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Colossians 2:8 φιλοσοφίας philosophy
See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, which are based on human tradition and the spiritual forces of the world rather than on Christ.
Here: In the first century this meant any organised teaching about God, the world and how to live, often with a disciplined way of life attached. Jewish writers called their own religion a philosophy. Here it is probably the rival teaching's own name for itself, and Paul's next words judge it.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.