Apostate or Godless?

Honesty

In the NWT, the Hebrew word chaneph is translated as apostate. In all other bible translations that I have consulted it is translated as godless. Apostate is not referenced at all in the Hebrew dictionaries I have examined. The context indicates that godless is the more correct word.

Is there any Hebrew dictionary or lexicon that defines chaneph as apostate?

I have researched the following scriptures however, there are possibly others:

Job 8:13; 13:16; 15:34; 17:8; 20:5; 27:8; 34:30; 36:13

Psalms 35:16; 101:3

Proverbs 11:9

Isaiah 9:17; 10:6; 32:6; 33:14

It is interesting to note that in the NWT there are no scriptures in the New Testament that contain the word apostate. The Greek word hypokrites has been translated as hypocrite in the NWT, as in all other bible translations that I researched.

Matthew 5:16; 6:2; 7:5; 22:18; 23:13, 15, 23 25, 27, 29; 24:51

Luke 6:42; 12:56; 13:15

Mark 7:6

skyman

Thanks for your notes.

tetrapod.sapien

either works for me.

Cygnus

*** Rbi8 Acts 21:21 ***

But they have heard it rumored about you that you have been teaching all the Jews among the nations an apostasy from Moses

My NSR says "forsake Moses..."

My Jewish NY says "apostasize from Moses..."

My NJB says "break away from Moses..."

I don't think I'd equate apostasy with godlessness. But that's only a conclusion made by 5 minutes of thinking about it while I'm watching Napolean Dynamite.

Narkissos

As to chaneph, I guess "godless" is ok provided one doesn't interpret this word against the background of a monotheistic concept of "God". It is "godless" in the more general sense of "impious," "profane," "wayward"...

Interestingly the few occurrences of the verbal root ch-n-ph which do not simply reflect the use of the noun chaneph border on the vocabulary of ritual uncleanness: to defile or profane, especially the land, e.g. Numbers 35:33; Isaiah 24:5; Jeremiah 3:1f; Psalm 106:38. Holladay (translating HAL) suggests a possible exceptional meaning "bring to apostasy" in the much later text of Daniel 11:32 (another possibility being "flatter").

As to apostasia and the related verb aphistèmi, yes they occur many times in the NT, often without any theological meaning and almost always without the definite "technical" ring of "apostasy". This latter sense only emerges in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 (and perhaps, ironically, in Acts 21:21 about Paul). This has already been debated to death, must see if I find a link.