had an established meaning before the LXX incorporated it into that version.  If

the word thus established by usage is given a new meaning, evidence will be

necessary and forthcoming.

Let us repeat X's question after reading the history and usage of the word

kosmos.  `Is the word kosmos never used of an orb, a starry world, a planet?'

and the remainder of his article is intended to prove that the answer is `No'.

He attempts to cover himself by limiting his enquiry to the usage of kosmos in

the New Testament.  But that will not do -- unless Ephesians 1:4 and other

references to `the foundation of the world' are to be considered as outside the

New Testament.  We are not concerned with the limited fallen disrupted `world'

that lies about us, and of which we form part; we are concerned with the meaning

of that `world' so intimately associated with the period of our election to

glory, and X is out to show that kosmos can have no reference to `an orb, a

starry world, or a planet'.

Let us now bring forward our first witness.  The first occurrence of

kosmos is in that venerable version, the Septuagint.  Grinfield in his Apology

for the Septuagint (1850), pp. ix, x, 90, 24, says:

`This Version of the Hebrew Scriptures was made between two and three

centuries, before the Christian era ... it was universally received by the

Hellenists, or Jews of the Dispersion, as authoritative and canonical,

being publickly used in their Synagogues, both before and after the

Christian era. ... Christ and the Apostles, in their references to the Old

Testament, make their principal citations in the words of the LXX and

occasionally, where it differs from the Hebrew text. ... There is a body

of quotation from the LXX in the New Testament, amounting, as nearly as I

can estimate, to the bulk of St. Mark's Gospel. ... The most remarkable

and important feature of this version consists in its regular selection of

the same doctrinal words and expressions, as those, which were

subsequently adopted by the Evangelists and Apostles.  The terms

Repentance, Faith, Righteousness, Justification, Redemption,

Sanctification, &c. together with the titles of Lord, Christ, Saviour,

Holy Spirit &c. are the very same in the Alexandrian version, as in the

New Testament, and they are used precisely in the same meaning'

(Grinfield's own italics).

Such is the character of the witness we are about to hear.

The first

occurrence of kosmos in the LXX is Genesis 2:1:

`Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host (kosmos)

of them'.

The Hebrew word translated `host' or `kosmos' is tsaba, the essence of

which is `order'.  It is used of the assembly in orderly troops of soldiers and

of the starry host of heaven, God calling Himself `The Lord of Hosts'.  Genesis

2:1 certainly includes Adam, (which is not the point at issue), it also includes

`heaven and earth', `all the host of them', which X denies.  There are one or

two other places in that `two dozen' references so cavalierly dismissed, that

were written long after man's world had become the thing it is, yet including

the heavenly bodies and heavenly rulers -- all of which the uncritical reader

loses if X is blindly followed.