ἄστοργος

From the study of 2 Timothy 3:3

Range of meaning

The word is built from the alpha-privative ('un-', 'without') plus storgē / stergō, the affection that comes naturally within a family: parent for child, child for parent, and between spouses and siblings. Astorgos means lacking that instinctive family love, hard-hearted toward one's own kin. By extension it can describe someone who is heartless in general, but the family centre of the word stays in view.

Against the English

KJV, WEB and YLT keep the family nuance with 'without natural affection'. BSB 'unloving', NIV 'without love' and ESV 'heartless' make it general, so the reader no longer sees that this is the love one would expect even from the worst person toward their own children or parents.

How it drifted

Modern versions simplify to avoid the old phrase 'natural affection'. 'Unloving' is not wrong, but it is broader and weaker than the Greek.

Used elsewhere in the period

The positive philostorgos ('tenderly affectionate') is one of the most common words of praise in Greek epitaphs and family papyri, used of spouses, parents and children. 4 Maccabees speaks at length of the mother's storgē for her seven sons (e.g. 4 Macc 14:13–15:13). Astorgos also appears in Paul's vice list in Romans 1:31. Greek moralists treated lack of storgē as a mark of something gone badly wrong in human nature.