Bible Lexicons

Deissmann’s discovery of ἀνάθεμα in the ";Biblical Greek"; sense, in a source entirely independent of Jewish influence, is a remarkable confirmation of his general thesis. At the end of a heathen curse from Megara, belonging to i/ii A.D., there is a separate line of large letters ΑΝΕΘΕΜΑ which he (LAE p. 92 f.) interprets as = ἀνάθεμα —";curse!"; The weakening of the accented α to ε is explained as a vulgar Greek extension of the augment to a derivative (cf. Nägeli p. 49, following Wackernagel). See on this the plentiful material in Hatzidakis Einleitung, p. 64 f. The verb occurs three times in the same curse, l. 5 ἀναθεματίζ [ομ ]εν αὐτούς, l. 8 ἀναθεμα [τί ]ζομεν, and on the back l. 8 f. ἀναθεματί [ζ ]ομεν τούτο [υς ]. For the complete text, as originally edited by Wünsch, see IG III. 2, and also his Antike Fluchtafeln, p. 4 ff. Newton (Essays in Archœology, p. 193 f.) describes a number of leaden tablets of about B.C. 150 discovered at Knidos, in a sacred precinct dedicated to Persephone and other deities, which were graven with similar anathemata. The person on whom the curse was to fall was always devoted to the vengeance of the two Infernal Goddesses, Demeter and her daughter, ";May he or she never find Persephone propitious!"; With 1 Corinthians 16:21 may be compared the ending of a sepulchral inscription (iv/v A.D.) from Attica, where on any one’s interfering with the remains the curse is called down—ἀνάθεμαἤτω μαρὰν ἀθὰν (see Roberts-Gardner 387) : the meaning of the Aramaic σύμβολον being wholly unknown, it could be used as a curse—like unknown words in later days! It should be noted that the new meaning ";curse"; naturally attached itself to the late form ἀνάθεμα rather than to the older ἀνάθημα. Nouns in -μα tended to develop weak root-form by association with those in -σις, which always had it. The noun is MGr : thus ἀνάθεμα ἐσένα, ";a curse on you"; (Thumb, Handbook p. 38).