Gangrene
Gangrene
(Gr. , an eating, spreading sore, from , to gnaw, Authorized Version canker. Two very early translations of 2Ti 2:17 may be cited: Ase holi writ sei, hore speche spret ase cauncre [Ancr. Rules, 98, ann. 1225; see canker in OED [Note: ED Oxford English Dictionary.] ]; The word of hem crepith as a kankir [Wyclif, Bible, ed. 1382; changed to canker in 1388 ed. The Vulgate has ut cancer]).-Until about a.d. 1600, canker signified corroding ulcerations generally, and was earlier derived from Italian and medical Latin cancrena. Gangrene is the term applied to necrosis or mortification of a part of the animal body, attacking especially the extremities, which, as it moves upward, unless arrested, involves more and more healthy tissue, and finally results in death. In its figurative use it symbolizes anything that slowly but surely and malignantly corrupts, depraves, and consumes what is good. The cause of the gangrene referred to in 2Ti 2:17 is incipient Gnosticism, which subverted the Christian teaching concerning the resurrection, alleging that it had occurred already, in opposition to the belief of the apostles that the resurrection was future, being not merely spiritual but involving the whole man. In Jam 5:3 cankered in the Authorized Version is in the Revised Version translated rusted.
C. A. Beckwith.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
Gangrene
gangren (, gaggraina, pronounced gan-graina; the King James Version canker): The name was used by the old Greek physicians for an eating ulcer which corrodes the soft parts and, according to Galen, often ends in mortification. Paul compares the corrupting influence of profane babbling or levity, in connection with subjects which ought to be treated with reverence to this disease (2Ti 2:17). The old English word canker is used by 16th-and 17th-century authors as the name of a caterpillar which eats into a bud. In this sense it occurs 18 times in Shakespeare (e.g. Midsummer Night’s Dream, II, ii, 3). The canker-worm mentioned 6 times by Joel and Nahum is probably the young stage of Acridium peregrinum, a species of locust. Cankered in Jam 5:3 the King James Version means rusted (Greek katotai), and is so rendered in the Revised Version (British and American). In Susanna verse 52 Coverdale uses the phrase, O thou old cankered carle, in Daniel’s address to the elder, where English Versions of the Bible has waxen old in wickedness. The word is still used in the Scottish dialect and applied to persons who are cross-grained and disagreeable.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Gangrene
“an eating sore,” spreading corruption and producing mortification, is used, in 2Ti 2:17, of errorists in the church, who, pretending to give true spiritual food, produce spiritual gangrene (AV, “canker,” RV, “gangrene”).