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Bible Dictionaries
Chance
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or CHANCE.—The word occurs only once in Authorized and Revised Versions of the Gospels, viz. in Luke 10:30, where in the parable of the Good Samaritan the priest is said to have been going down that way ‘by chance.’ In the original the phrase is κατὰ συγκρίαν, Vulgate accidit ut. The word συγκυρία is found nowhere else in NT, and rarely in the Gr. authors. The idea of ‘ehance’ is ordinarily expressed in Gr. by the nouns τύχη, συντυχία, or by the verb τυγχάνω. Neither of these nouns occurs in NT, and the verb, in its intransitive sense of ‘chancing’ or ‘happening,’ but rarely. Examples are 1 Corinthians 15:37 εἰ τύχοι σίτου, which Authorized and Revised Versions translates ‘it may chance of wheat’ (the only other occasion on which the word ‘chance’ is found in Authorized and Revised Versions of NT), and 1 Corinthians 14:10 εἰ τύχοι, Authorized and Revised Versions ‘it may be.’
In the Gospels τυγχἁνω is used in its Intransitive sense, with the idea, viz. of ‘happening,’ only once, and that is, curiously enough, in TR [Note: R Textus Receptus.] reading of Luke 10:33, the verse immediately preceding the one under consideration, where the robbers are said to have left their victim ἡμιθανῆ τυγχάνοντα. The τιγχα̇νοντα here, as Meyer and others have pointed out, is not simply equivalent to ὂντα, though the Authorized Version translators appear to have so regarded it. The expression properly means ‘half dead as he chanced to be.’ The shade of suggestion is that the robbers left him in complete indifference to his fate, to live or die just as it might happen. The fact, however, that τυγχάνοντα is lacking in אΒΔΛΞ, al. justifies its omission from the text by WII and other critical editors.
Unlike τύχη and συντυχία, συγκυρία does not denote ‘chance’ in the proper sense of the word, i.e. something which ‘falls, out’ independently of the ordinary laws of causation (‘chance’ comes from the Low Lat. cadentia, ‘a falling,’ and may have been suggested by the falling of the dice from a dice-box). Derived as it is from σύν and κυρέω (‘fall in with’), it corresponds almost exactly to our word ‘coincidence.’ All that our Lord’s use of the phrase κατὰ συγκυρίαν accordingly suggests is, that by a coincidence of events a certain priest came by just as the wounded traveller lay helpless on the road. And, as Godet remarks, He may even have used the expression with a kind of irony, since ‘it is certainly not by accident that the narrator brings those two personages on the scene’ (Com. on Lk. in loc.).
Apart from any further occurrence of the word ‘chance’ in Authorized and Revised Versions of the Gospels, the idea of hap or chance may seem to be conveyed by the use of ‘haply’ in Mark 11:13, where Jesus is said to have come to the fig-tree, ‘if haply he might find anything thereon,’ and in Luke 14:29, where He Himself says of the builder who could not finish his tower, ‘lest haply when he hath laid a foundation, and is not able to finish it.’ But in both cases we have to do in the original simply with conjunctions and particles, εἰ ἅρα in the one passage and μή ποτε in the other.
As a matter of fact, the idea of chance was as foreign to the ancient Jewish as to the modern scientific mind; for while the scientist holds that the universal reign of law renders the operation of chance impossible, the Hebrew may be said to have believed (cf. Proverbs 16:33) of every so-called chance that ‘Eternal God that chance did guide.’ In popular language the idea of things happening by chance appears to be admitted in both OT and NT (cf. 1 Samuel 6:9, Ecclesiastes 9:11, 1 Corinthians 15:37), as it constantly is among ourselves. But in the case of the Scripture writers, at all events, it denoted only human ignorance of proximate causes, not the occurrence of events independently of the Divine will (with 1 Samuel 6:9 cf. 1 Samuel 6:12, with Ecclesiastes 9:11 cf. Ecclesiastes 9:1, with 1 Corinthians 15:37; cf. 1 Corinthians 3:7, Galatians 6:7 f.).
As bearing upon the subject of chance, reference may be made to the casting of lots by the Roman soldiers for the garments of Jesus. The incident is mentioned by every one of the Evangelists, and is explained by John as referring only to His seamless tunic (Matthew 27:35, Mark 15:24, Luke 23:34, John 19:23-24). Among the Jews the casting of lots was regarded not as a reference of a question to the fickleness of chance, but as a solemn appeal to the Divine judgment (cf. Proverbs 16:33). And though by the time of Christ such a game of chance as dice-playing (κυβεία) had been introduced into Palestine (cf. St. Paul’s ἐν τῇ κυβείᾳ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ‘by the sleight of men,’ lit. ‘by the dice-playing,’ because of the trickery and cheating which had come to be associated with the game), it was repudiated by those who adhered strictly to the Jewish law (see Schürer, HJP [Note: JP History of the Jewish People.] ii. i. 36). With the Roman soldiers it was otherwise. Dice are thought by some to have been an invention of the Romans, and certainly dicing was very common among them. In his famous ‘Crucifixion’ in the Church of Sta. Maria degli Angioli at Lugano, Luini represents the four soldiers as rising from a game of dice to dispute with one another the possession of the seamless robe. And more than one writer who has sought to describe the awful scene of Calvary has considered it natural to suppose that the soldiers would amuse themselves during the hours of waiting by playing their favourite game (see Farrar, Life of Christ, ad loc.). No information is given us by the Evangelists as to the manner in which the lots were cast. But it may be that a cast of the dice-box was the plan which suggested itself most readily to those rude men, and that they actually gambled for the Saviour’s coat while He bung above them on the cross, dying for the sins of the world. See, further, art. Lots (Casting of).
J. C. Lambert.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Chance'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/c/chance.html. 1906-1918.
