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Bible Dictionaries
Tittle
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or TITTLE (Gr. κεραία [WH [Note: H Westcott and Hort’s text.] κερέα; see vol. ii. App. p. 151]).—Both the Gr. and the English words occur in NT only in Matthew 5:18, Luke 16:17. κεραία (‘little horn,’ dim. of κέρας) was used by Hesychius and other grammarians of the accents and diacritical marks in Gr., and the slight points and bends by which in Heb. such letters as ב and כ, ר and ר, ה and ח are distinguished from each other. ‘Tittle,’ which is just ‘title’ in another form of spelling (the shorter form is used in all the English VSS [Note: SS Versions.] , except the Rhemish, up to and including the Authorized Version of 1611), comes from titulus, which was used in late Lat. to denote any mark or stroke whereby one letter was distinguished from another. It was adopted by Wyclif and Tindale to render κεραία—Luther similarly employing Tüttel (Titel in modernized Germ. spelling). Great [Note: reat Cranmer’s ‘Great’ Bible 1539.] importance was attached by the Rabbis to the little marks by which certain Heb. letters are distinguished from others that they closely resemble, and there are several Jewish sayings which declare that any one who is guilty of interchanging such letters in certain passages of the OT will thereby destroy the whole world (see Edersheim, LT [Note: T Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah [Edersheim].] i. 537 f.; cf. Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. xi. 99).
On the lips of Jesus the saying, ‘One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law till all be fulfilled’ (Matthew 5:18), is startling; and a number of modern critical scholars are inclined to meet the exegetical difficulty by denying the genuineness of the logion—regarding it as an answer of the Evangelist himself to the Pauline anti-legalism, or even as a later Jewish-Christian insertion Certainly, if the saying stood by itself, unqualified and uninterpreted in any way, there might be some warrant for such criticism, even although on textual grounds there is nothing to be said against the verse, which, moreover, reappears in Luke, though in a shorter form. But the very fact that our Lord proceeds in what follows to repeal the old Law at various points, and to substitute for its enactments precepts of His own (Matthew 5:31 f., Matthew 5:33 ff., Matthew 5:38 ff.), suggests that Matthew 5:18, so far from being likely on His lips to mislead His hearers utterly, would be understood easily enough as nothing more than an emphatic affirmation, in the Master’s own characteristic style, of the rounded perfection of the ideal law. The objection that the reference to the jot and the tittle implies the written Law, and not the ideal law, has little force. One might as well say that when Jesus, in Matthew 5:29-30, bids His disciples pluck out their right eyes or cut off their right hands, He is urging them to a literal self-mutilation, inasmuch as hands and eyes are physical realities, not ideal things.
When we remember that Jesus was constantly charged by His enemies with being a law-breaker (Mark 2:16; Mark 2:18; Mark 2:24 etc.), we may see in the saying an utterance that has its polemical bearing. Immediately after (v. 20) we find Him declaring, ‘Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ And elsewhere He affirms that the Pharisaic and Rabbinic legalism led to a positive dishonouring of the Divine law in the interests of a human tradition (Mark 7:8-9; Mark 7:13). There were thus two reasons why on polemical grounds Jesus should assert the claims of the OT Law in the strongest possible way: (1) Because His enemies themselves continually dishonoured it: (2) because they falsely accused Him of being indifferent to it. And apart from polemics altogether, there was this positive reason why He should ‘magnify the law and make it honourable’—He knew (Mark 7:17) that the very purpose of His coming was, not to destroy it, but to fulfil. And so in the striking language of paradox and even of hyperbole that He was wont to use when He felt strongly and desired to speak strongly, He exclaimed, ‘For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all be fulfilled.’
The point of the saying clearly lies in the word ‘fulfilled.’ Christ comes, not to lower the standards of righteousness, as His enemies said, but to exalt them (cf. Mark 7:20). He comes, indeed, to repeal much in the old Law. The jots and tittles, be it observed, are to pass away when the Law is fulfilled. But He is to repeal the old by supplying the power for its true fulfilment, and by showing how the letter is transcended by the spirit. Regarded in this way, the saying is nothing more than an arresting utterance of the familiar Christian truth of the relation in spiritual things between the kernel and the husk, the calyx and the flower. Every fibre of the husk is precious—until the time comes for the living germ to be released. Each tiny, pointed sepal of the enfolding calyx must be preserved in its integrity—until the hour arrives for the bursting of the perfect corolla. Thus Jesus comes, not to destroy the least commandment (Mark 7:19), but to fulfil it. His ‘royal law,’ as St. James calls it (James 2:8), the law of liberty and love, is an abrogation of the Divine Law that went before only in the sense in which the blossom abrogates the bud and the flower the blossom. See, further, art. Law, § 6.
Literature.—Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible , art. ‘Tittle,’ and Ext. Vol. p. 24 f.; Weiss, NT Theol. i. 108; Beyschlag, NT Theol. i. 40; Wendt, Teach. of Jesus, ii. 7 ff.; Bruce, Kingdom of God, p. 64, and EGT [Note: GT Expositor’s Greek Testanent.] , Mt. in loc.; Dods in Expositor, iv. ix. [1894] 70 ff.
J. C. Lambert.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Tittle'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/t/tittle.html. 1906-1918.
