Aphesis in the Septuagint

The Septuagint renders both shemittah and deror with the single Greek word aphesis — the same word the documentary papyri use for ordinary commercial remission. The debt sense and the forgiveness sense are welded into one lexeme about three centuries before any gospel uses it.

In plain words

The Greek translation renders both Hebrew words for release with one word, aphesis, the everyday word in business papers for cancelling a debt. Here debt-release and forgiveness become one word, about three centuries before any Gospel uses it.

The mechanism

RELAY — the mechanism crosses a language boundary intact and arrives in Greek still carrying its ledger meaning. That is why the later religious usage is not a metaphor imported from outside; the debt lexeme is load-bearing.

Scripture

Leviticus 25; Deuteronomy 15

How it was checked

• EvidenceT7 PRIMARY DOCUMENT / MEASUREMENT; Status: COMMITTED; a release
• Letter eraTHE PROPHETS AND THE ROAD 776 BC to 4 BC
• SourcesMANUSCRIPT — LXX Leviticus 25 / Deuteronomy 15; PRIMARY DOCUMENT — the documentary papyri attesting aphesis as a commercial-remission term