From The Source (Ann Nyland expert Lexigrapher, Greek scholar)
In the late 1880s and again in the mid 1970s, large amounts of papyri and inscriptions were discovered. These impacted our knowledge of word meaning in the New Testament dramatically. Why? Well, the papyri and inscriptions were written at the time of the New Testament. They were non-literary sources, that is, they touched upon all aspects of life - everyday private letters from ordinary people, contracts of marriage and divorce, tax papers, official decrees, birth and death notices, tombstones, and business documents.
Why is this important? Prior to these discoveries, people who made up New Testament dictionaries didn’t have a clue what many of the words meant, as I said. But now, these rare words appeared commonly in different contexts, and everyday contexts too. We would use formal language in a letter to a politician, but we use everyday language in letters to friends. It is this everyday language that appears in the New Testament, and up popped hundreds of examples of these words. Large numbers of previously uncommon words found in the New Testament now appeared commonly in everyday documents as well as on inscriptions. Many mysteries of word meaning were thus solved.
15 volumes of new papyri were published in 1976. This meant that the meanings of a large number of words previously unattested were discovered. In the last 20 yrs, 4,000 inscriptions have been found at Ephesus alone. These discoveries have been largely overlooked by Bible translators. The problem is that laypersons and a significant number of Bible translators alike are unaware of all this as it is tucked away in technical journals. Available Bible dictionaries do not have this scholarship to any useful degree. BDAG has a little of it, but not much at all. In other words, Bible translators rely on dictionaries. The dictionaries are wrong, for many words.
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The word charis , often translated 'grace' is quite heavily used in the New Testament. For many Christians and denominations, particular
understandings of 'grace' shape their understanding of Christianity. Even though it means different things to different Christians, 'grace' ( charis ) is
commonly heavily used and an important theological and emotional term.
"The Reciprocity system" operated according to time-delay exchanges where goods were given and then at a later time goods of relatively equal value
were returned to the giver. These goods could be tangible (money, material goods) or intangible (public acclaim, authority). An obligation existed to
repay favors owed, they were not 'free' in the sense we would understand it - it is just like when a bank gives you a loan the money is not 'free'. (It
is due to this reciprocal nature of the transactions that scholars label it the Reciprocity System.)
Essentially the system was an informal system of economics.
The word charis itself is best translated with the English "favor" in the sense of talking about favors given and favors repaid. Greek makes
no linguistic distinction between the first favor given and the second favor to repay it, calling each a charis . Greek also uses charis to refer to a
positive attitude toward someone - we would speak in English of this as "regarding them favorably" or "having their favor".
People interpreting charis in the Bible made use of the information they had at the time and tried to make some sense of it.
Reformation Christianity is famous for seeing charis as being "free" of obligation and as no part of any reciprical transaction!
Such concepts have heavily influenced many Christians' understandings of 'grace' today, but have nothing to do with the actual meaning of charis in Greek.
The translation 'grace' is not an infallibly authentic one, it is not 'free', and it isn't the opposite of human effort.
These historical misinterpretations of 'grace' have led to correspondingly incorrect interpretations of passages that use charis . Romans 4, for example,
contrasts the Reciprocity System to a Contractual system (a rather subtle contrast) which has historically been exegeted as the difference between
human effort and reliance on 'grace'. Similarly Ephesians 2:8, due to the ambiguity in Greek about givers and receivers of favors clarifies that God is
the giver of the favor and we the receiver, and yet this has historically been exegeted as speaking about lack of human effort.
Unfortunately, nothing endures and propagates quite like bad theology. At certain points in history, theologians have constructed theologies based on
certain incorrect understandings of 'grace' and these theologies remain influential today and taught as biblical even when scholarship regarding the
meaning of these words has long moved on. Mistaken ideas about charis continue to influence many Christians who are convinced that 'grace' means
salvation is in no way by human effort.
The above is distilled from a blog on proper bible translation:
http://theogeek.blogspot.com/2008/02/proper-bible-translation.html