Babbler
Babbler
(Act 17:18)
Augustine and Wyclif wrongly derive the word from and translate it sower of words. It is properly derived from , seed, and , to gather. Originally an adjective, the derived substantive was used of small birds gathering crumbs (Aristophanes, Av. 233, 580). It was afterwards applied to loafers in the market-place who gained a precarious livelihood by what they could pick up, and it thus connotes a vulgar fellow, a parasite. Greek writers used it as a term of contempt for plagiarists and pseudo-philosophers (cf. Eustathius on Homer, Odyss. v. 490), and Zeno thus names one of his followers. W. M. Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, 1895, p. 242) speaks of the word as characteristically Athenian slang, clearly caught from the very lips of the Athenians. The word thus contemptuously implies one who is an outsider and yet wishes to pose as one of the inner circle, and probably does not refer to anything that the Apostle had said. It would seem, therefore, that the expression was used by the philosophers who have just been mentioned rather than by the populace in general. They resented the intrusion of one who had no credentials, and from the first viewed him with hostility (see, further, Ramsay, St. Paul in Athens, in Expositor, 5th ser., ii. [1895] 262ff.
F. W. Worsley.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
Babbler
BABBLER.Act 17:18 What will (RV [Note: Revised Version.] would) this babbler say? The Gr. word translated babbler means one who picks up a precarious living, like a crow. The language of such persons, says Bp. Chase, was, and is, plentiful and (on occasion) low; but it is possible that the Athenians applied the word to St. Paul not on account of his speech, but his looks. In that case the modern coinage carpet-bagger would give the sense.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
Babbler
babler , baal ha-lashon; the King James Version of Ecc 10:11 literally, master of the tongue; the Revised Version (British and American) CHARMER; , lapistes, the King James Version of Ecclesiasticus 20:7; the Revised Version (British and American) BRAGGART; , spermologos; the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) of Act 17:18): The latter Greek word is used of birds, such as the crow, that live by picking up small seeds (sperma, a seed, legein, to gather), and of men, for hangers on and parasites who obtained their living by picking up odds and ends off merchants’ carts in harbors and markets. It carries the suggestion of picking up refuse and scraps, and in the literature of plagiarism without the capacity to use correctly (Ramsay). The Athenian philosophers in calling Paul a spermologos, or ignorant plagiarist, meant that he retailed odds and ends of knowledge which he had picked up from others, without possessing himself any system of thought or skill of language – without culture. In fact it was a fairly correct description of the Athenian philosophers themselves in Paul’s day.
Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen, 141ff.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Babbler
This is literally ‘master of the tongue,’ Ecc 10:11 : the verse may be translated, “If the serpent bite without enchantment, then the ‘charmer’ hath no advantage.” In Act 17:18 the word is lit. ‘seed picker;’ a word of contempt; one that picks up idle tales, a gossip, chatterer; ‘base fellow,’ margin .
Fuente: Concise Bible Dictionary
Babbler
A sarcastic epithet applied to St. Paul.
Act 17:18