Pharmakeia in Galatians 5:20. What does it mean?

Anyway, getting back to the original post:

Was hoping to attract those Christians who use bible concordances and lexicons, and also students and scholars who might be able to quote from ancient Greek texts like Plato and such. Here again are the excerpts I quoted from Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon:

Now, let me do an experiment. I am going to again quote from Galatians 5:19-20, several times, only I’m going to substitute the word sorcery for one of the other definitions from a Greek-English Lexicon by Liddell and Scott:

Or, did Paul mean “title of a lost work by Hippocrates”?

Good point, kingdaddy.

Hm. Here’s something you might not consider.

Egyptians combined meditation with the use of drugs.

Could they not have done the mind altering state with a combination of the drug use as well as the meditation?

They did cast spells or see visions with the magic leaves, accroding to TBN. :smiley: :smiley:

Brief, but good post. I have a request for anyone who is using “Greek letters” on this thread. If you choose to use Greek letters could you, please, also use the corresponding “Roman letters” that we use in the English language. Most people reading this probably don’t know the Greek script. For example, Φαρμακο is pronounced “pharmako”. Also, depending on what technology someone is using, the Greek letters might show up as a bunch of question marks, or something. So, if you wish to use Greek letters could you write it like this:

Thanks.

When trying to discover the definition of a word or what the author of a text had intended to mean there is an error people fall into called eisegesis;

The following excerpts are from some church websites. They are an example of reading 20th century drug prohibition into the bible. In other words, they are an example of eisegesis:

[i]The use of drugs is also included in the word sorcery. It comes from the Greek word pharmakeia.

In Galatians 5:19-21 is the mention of sorcery. In other words the ones who use drugs.

God clearly states that ‘Pharmakeia’ (the use of drugs) is a sin in Galatians 5:19-20[/i]

The idea that the word pharmakeia in Galatians 5:20 means “illicit drug use” seems to have been popularized beginning in the late 1960s. I don’t think we will find very many explanations like this of the word pharmakeia prior to the 1960s.

Let’s go back to the 16th century and see what Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant Reformation, had to say about the word under consideration. In his 1519 lecture on Galatians 5:20 Luther stated:

In Luther’s 1535 lecture on sorcery from Galatians 5:20 he talks about witches casting spells upon cattle and crops being damaged by hailstorms caused by their sorcery (Luthers Works, Vol 27). Luthers commentaries on Galatians sound nothing like the Galatian commentaries that have been sold in Christian book stores in recent years. Luther makes no mention of hemp, or opium, or even the mushroom.

Lets move ahead from Luthers time to the late 19th century and look at 2 bible concordances:

  1. Analytical Concordance to the Bible
    by Robert Young (1822-1888)

  2. Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible
    by James Strong (1822-1894)

Strongs Concordance is the most popular. I compared the definition of “pharmakeia” in my Strong’s and Young’s concordances, published before 1990, to editions published in the 1880s. There the same.

Let’s do a bible word study. We’re going to look up the word sorcery (witchcraft in KJV) in Galatians 5:20. Strong’s concordance refers us to:

So now we get the impression that Paul means “drugs” in Galatians 5:20. Apparently Strongs bible concordance is the primary source of commentary material that tells us pharmakeia means drugs.

Let’s continue with our word study. We will now look up the word “sorceries” in Isaiah 47:9. Strong’s concordance refers us to:

So, according to Strong’s concordance, sorcery in Isaiah 47:9 doesn’t mean “pharmacy or medication” like it does in Galatians 5:20. So, the word kashaph doesn’t give us the impression of drugs like pharmakeia does. Why not? It’s the same word! When they translated the Hebrew bible into Greek in the 2nd century B.C. they used the word “pharmakeia” in Isaiah 47: 9.

I am of the opinion that James Strong and others, who published bible concordances in the late 19th century read their social-political opinions into their concordance definition of words having the root “pharma”. In late 19th century England and America there was a church movement to suppress the opium trade, complaints about unlabled patent medicines as well as an alcohol prohibition movement. How much James Strong and other late 19th century publishers of bible concordances were influenced by the events of their day is debatable. But they obviously had some bias for cherry picking the word “pharmacy” instead of, say “poison” for their definition of pharmakeia. And why a differant definition for the same word in the Old Testament?

I looked at a Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament published 1854 which defines both the Hebrew word 'keshaph" and the Greek “pharmakos”. It makes no mention of drugs.

Let’s go back to the first century and consult a contemporary of Paul named Philo. The Forward to C.D. Yonge’s English translation of “The Works of Philo” states:

“Philo of Alexandria lived from about 20 B.C to about A.D. 50. He is one of the most important Jewish authors of the Second Temple period and was a contemporary of both Jesus and Paul.”

Philo also wrote in Greek. Since Philo was a contemporary of Paul, and also a Jew who wrote in Greek, we can therefore discover some of the usages of Greek words having the root pharma, including pharmakeia, because he used them in his writings, which were written about the same time as Paul’s letter’s. The following are excerpts from “The Works of Philo”.

Sections 83 thru 143 has the subtitle “The Law Concerning Murderers”. In other words, the entire context is about laws against “homicide”. Words having the root pharma, as in pharmakeia, listed in the above quotes are translated as “poisoners”, as in someone commiting murder with poison instead of a sword. That is proved by the context. In this chapter Philo is most certainly talking about “homicide”. He is not talking about medicine, wine, opium or cannabis. Perhaps Paul also meant poisoners in Galatians.

If in fact sorcery is the correct translation, then it means to try to defy God with magic, and in a sense become your own God or; To rely on and trust solely in yourself and try to claim the powers of God.

                                               <img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/7/7fc2d9cf701d2c2c22729238172e5be83405063f.gif" width="15" height="17" alt=":evilfun:" title="Evil Fun"/>

My new testament greek concordance gives only the meanings “witchcraft” or “sorcery” (“idolatries, witchcraft, hatred”) – which makes me think it might have been related to making potions as a root meaning.

But whatever it meant, it must be pretty serious as it is also used in Revelations 9:21 (“nor of their sorceries, nor of their”) and 18:23 (“for by their sorceries were all the nations”).

Just to note, some spiritual directors say to act as if everything depended on you and to pray as if everything depended on God.

Also, God lives, contemplates, loves, and these actions are in us by His grace,
and we thankfully claim our powers as descendant from the powers of God, our Father in heaven.

Just some quibbles with your phrasing. Welcome to the ILP boards. :slight_smile:

mrn

Josephus Flavius was a historian and a commanding officer of the Galilean Jewish forces in the war against Rome, A.D 66-70. He was born about A.D.37 and died about A.D.101. His Hebrew name was Joseph ben Mattathias. He was educated in a rabbinic school in Jerusalem. His two most famous works are “The Jewish War” and “The Antiquities of the Jews”. Josephus, a contemporary of Paul, wrote in Greek. Let’s see how Josephus used the word under consideration:

There is little doubt that Josephus is referring to poisoning, as in political assassination, in the above quotes from his “Antiquities of the Jews” which was written about the same time as Galatians and Revelation. It is, therefore, very probable that this was what was meant by the words pharmakeia and pharmakos in Galatians 5:20 and Revelation 9:21, 18:23, 21:8 and 22:15.

Josephus and Philo were contemporaries of Paul. All three of them visited Jerusalem when the temple still stood. They could have met face to face, Philo being Paul’s elder and Josephus his younger. All three were educated in the Torah and also wrote in Greek. Let’s see how Philo and Josephus understood Exodus 22:18:

So, Philo and Josephus understood “pharmakous” in Exodus 22:18 to mean “poisoner”, as in committing murder with poison. It is very probable that this was what was meant in Galatians and Revelation.

I had stated above that the Strongs, and other bible concordance’s and lexicons, published in the late 19th century and afterward are misleading on the definition of pharmakeia and pharmakos. It is quite obvious from reading these sections in Philo and Josephus that they mean “poisoning”, as in intentional homicide by using a poison. One can also find this in Platos Laws (book 11).

One could excuse a novice bible student for making the error of thinking the word sorcery (pharmakeia) in Galatians and Revelation means smoking pot or maybe Walgreens. But those who edited and published the bible concordances and lexicons, such as Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, are without excuse. They knew better. A concordance or lexicon carries more weight than just mere opinion. I am not bad mouthing bible concordances and lexicons in general. Indeed, I have found most of them to be very useful in doing word studies. But by defining pharmakeia and pharmakos as “enchantment with drugs” is either poor scholarship or downright dishonest.

The sections here quoted in Greek from Philo, Josepus and Plato can be found in the “Loeb Classical Library” which contains the Greek classics with Greek and English on opposite pages. They can be found in any academic library, larger public libraries, and probably on line.

How do you explain these quotes from the book of Revelation?
In the first one it mentions murderers and sorceries (and fornications and theft) as if they were separate things.
In the second, the sorceries are said to cause deception.

These are all carnal vices and have no spiritual attribute to them. Pharmaciys deal with the physical and one tied closely to sorcery in the O.T. see Israels captivity into Babylon, for example.
Paul is saying , seek the spiritual things ( fruits of the spirit ) available and leave the carnal thing to the unbeiving world to deal with.

So all nations were decieved by murder by poisoning? :confused:

I have not seen “my real name” for awhile, but I have an answer as to where the word pharmakeia appears in the same context with assassinations in other ancient literature. I here cite Polybius, a Greek historian who lived from about 205 to 123 B.C.

If one looks at this section from Polybius in the “Loeb Classic” you’ll find that the word pharmakeia is spelled exactly the same as in Galatians 5.

Also, Revelation 18:23 says “By pharmakeia were misled all the nations”. The ancient historical records such as Josephus, Dio’s Roman History, and others state that many powerful political leaders gained power by poisoning (pharmakeia) their rivals.

If you read my post’s above where I quote Josephus and Philo from the Loeb Classics, which have the Greek word beside the English, you should begin to discover how the word was used by the ancient writers. However, I don’t want to get into a different subject on this thread such as “what does the book of Revelation mean” if that’s what you were getting at.

Let’s forget about all the language nonsense for a minute as you’ll never be 100% sure of your translation when there are many others with many other versions…

…Ask yourself: would an all powerful, loving God create illnesses for which he would provide no cure??? I am so sick of people trying to argue that things that grow naturally like cannabis and peyote are evil sorcery, Moses clearly stated that God gave us all seed bearing plants on the face of the whole earth.

Furthermore could extraction of singular chemical compounds mixed with other chemical compounds then synthesized (completely unnaturally), patented, and sold for profit despite the fact that many of them clearly kill people and have to later be removed from market not be deception or “sorcery” of some kind??? especially when most of these “cures” do not even help to make people any healthier but try to magically make symptoms of further reaching illnesses go away?!!!?

–don’t respond, this will be my only post, but really, think about it.

To scapegoat someone.
As in to bring about their death to hide crimes of yourself or others.
To pay someone to murder another in an occult or covered up kind of way.
A cover up, a conspiracy, making someone a patsy to fall victim to a dirty deed.
It covers a broad spectrum, even something like shaming or excommunicating.
If someone knows the truth, or if he says the truth then he must go or he must die… that sort of thing.
One of the most efficient ways being to drug them.
Either to kill them right on the spot or to make them an addict that slowly kills himself because he needs the drug.
As an addict he loses all grace from peers and society. Slowly dying socially before finally dying physically.
Many ways to scapegoat and pharma comes not from the use of drugs per se but with how drugs have been the chief instrument over time.
A drug is called a DoT or death/damage over time weapon. It is underhanded and occult and so tied to the word we know as sorcery.

Magic has nothing to do with all of this other than how we modernly tie it to sorcery and how in the past people of magic would turn to pharma to keep their magic.
Magic means something like greatness or power. As person like Hitler with his ability to speak and cause others to flock to him is a perfect example of the word magic.
It means great one, to be great, to be powerful, to be mighty, to be more than others and others looking up to you because of sycophantic or other related feelings.
It is the unhealthy over the top self confidence of a person who is his own god and who is viewed by others as a god or as a power in this world.
That is all magic means. It does not mean throwing lightning bolts from your finger tip or ice daggers from your eyes.
Well of course it does, but in a symbolic way, such as when you stare someone down to show them your dominance or to cut them down a peg. That is magic.
Of course pointing to someone to finger him as the ‘bad guy’ in order to scapegoat him and get him out of the way is killing via lightning strike from your fingertip.

Folks rather believe the fantasy of the literal than the reality of the symbol.

The word and concept “magic” refers to hidden, invisible, or inexplicable influence. The word “sorcery” refers specifically to potions, or what we today refer to as biochemicals, or drugs. Sorcery is associated with magic, but magic is a broader field involving almost any kind of strong deception, chemically based or not.

  1. Clearly, Pharmakeia refers to drugs, and the attempt to limit it’s meaning to poisoning is a self-serving deception.

  2. The words pharmacologic, pharmacology, pharmaceutical, pharmacopeia, pharmacy, pharmacokinetics, pharmaotherapeutics, and pharmacist, to name a few, all derive from the same root. Each of the above words referring to drugs as a topics, comprise toxicological subtopics, but to limit “pharmakeia” to homocidal poisoning is simply wrong. It is a wrongful justification for explicitly that of which scripture warns us.

  3. Obviously, a drug can be used in different ways, perhaps to kill, intoxicate, incapacitate, or treat. For example, a barbiturate is used for lethal injection in capital punishment, here, both a drug, and a lethal poison used to intentionally kill someone for taking another’s life. Conversely the same drug, at a lower dose, can be used as a medicine, e.g., to treat seizures, or yield sleep for a distraught person. A barbiturate can also be used as a “party” drug, to alter the mind, produce a spell, or even as a vehicle for rape or murder.

  4. The use of potions has been intrinsic to sorcery and witchcraft throughout its history, and, again, of course, there are many potions for many purposes. One could, e.g., kill a heard of cattle, and demonstrate one’s power, or poison a country’s leader so as to assassinate. One could sub-lethally dose another person surreptitiously for nefarious purposes, and/or simply lustful purposes. But, for the most part the drugs are taken by the sinner themselves so as to produce a spell, to feel, to host the spirit of the drug experience. For example, in the case of hard drink, we call it distilled “spirits”. There are many spirits, but only one Holy Spirit. The righteousness of the Holy Spirit is incompatible with the presence of the familiar, unclean spirits. Purity and contamination cannot be compatible.

  5. A case was made by Timothy Leary in the 1960’s that one could find God by using “a sacrament that works”. He claimed the church’s sacraments “didn’t work” but his, LSD, and other psychedelics did work. The certainly “work” in some fashion, spiritually. However, later he told us that he saw himself furthering the work of Aleister Crowley, the great pedophilic occultist heroin addict hero of today’s Satanists. When asked about this once, who’s side was he on, Leary answered by quoting the Grateful Dead’s song, saying, “Well, ‘a friend of the Devil is a friend of mine’”.

“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: … the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…” Gn 3:4

  1. "“I tell you the truth, anyone who sneaks over the wall of a sheepfold, rather than going through the gate, must surely be a thief and a robber! But the one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” Jn 10:1

  2. Timothy Leary’s “following” turned into a disaster of broken families, addicted lives, scattered, drunken, turning from God. The hopes of the flower child generation did not materialize into a following of goodness and light that Leary promised. One of his last youtube videos shows him chain smoking, huffing nitrous oxide laughing gas, in a wheel-chair, mumbling sloganeered nonsense, surrounded by 18 year-olds, who have not yet had the chickens come home to roost.

  3. Witches used drugs throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. They were fond of anticholineric, atropine-like compounds, datura, henbane, withches root, loco weed, amanita mushrooms, etc. When they took these drugs they often felt as if they were flying, perhaps on a broom, for example, and so the broom came to be associated with iconography of a witch.

  4. The word pharmakeia used in Galatians was translated into English as witchcraft or sorcery at a time when drugs were less pervasive and commonplace in society, in a time when such use of them was understood as what it is: witchcraft.

  5. Alcohol is prohibited in most Islamic societies, but it is said for example, that Tehran is the ecstasy capital of the world. Combined with the West’s love of drugs, it is easy to see what is meant in Revelation’s recitation of a time when all of the nations are deceived by pharmakeia.

  6. The Greek word for drug was used in Galatians 5:19-21. The Greek words for poison or toxin were not used, e.g., not toxini, ios, nor diliatrius.

  7. If the word drug were meant to mean murder, Paul would arguably have used murder, instead. But then, it would not make sense, because Paul was talking about about a particular category of sins, the acts of the flesh. If you substitute “murder” or “poisoning” for “witchcraft” (pharmakeia) in the passage, it becomes incompatible with the rest of the general theme of the nature of the carnal acts described, all of which are more about selfish indulgence than the physical injury of others. Including getting high. Including advocating getting high. Obviously.

“The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Gn5:19-21