Easy turned hard

Sometimes people focus on word connections between two languages that aren't really there.  It's part of the learning curve when one begins learning a language.  For example, realize in English is used most of the time to mean to become aware of something. But occasionally the word means to complete something.  So, when Spanish speakers begin learning English, they use the word realize in sentences when the best word in English is really do, accomplish, or perform. That is because realizar in Spanish means to accomplish something or as a synonym of hacer, meaning to do.

This is a phenomenon so common it has a linguistic name - cognate/false cognate.  It's quite common in related languages, but not common at all in languages that have no common parent language (Chinese and German, for example).  It's an easy fix when it happens.  One just reinforces the new context of the word through practice and a certain number of repetitions in various contexts.  Voila! Easy fix.

But when it happens in religion, matters are complicated because in religion, one adds to his doctrinal or value basis for one's behavior.  Recently, I was privy to a social media entry by someone who was reading Revelation and came across the two instances of the word translated in many versions of the New Testament as sorcery.  The person had done a dictionary study of the word used in Greek and seen the word pharmakeia in an interlinear version of Revelation.

Of course, a person who studies languages knows about cognates and false cognates.  So, when the person made the statement that it was no mistake that the word used in Revelation for sorcery is the root word for pharmacy, the linguist smiles.  But, the problem is also compounded because Roman and Greek culture of the time of the New Testament intertwined the idea of sorcery with people who used various natural drugs, usually in the form of a vapor from gases like sulfur or fumes from plant leaves and vines.  It was also used metaphorically by writers to show how people are taken from cultural traditions (like the children in the story of the Pied Piper). 

Modern Americans live after the scientific revolution in the world that took place between the 1100s and 1700s.  So the idea of sorcery is an idea of mystical arts, black magic, or voodoo.  Certainly the thinking is that sorcery is a black art that has no basis in truth or reality.  There is not really a modern English word in common use for the idea of pharmakeia because American culture is so different from the one of the Roman Greco world.  Scientific thinking has completely replaced the idea of seeking words of wisdom from an oracle, a priestess who gave advice under the influence of vapors or of wanting, or of trying to induce a state of awareness so that one can speak to dead spirits and gods, or of taking a hallucinatory journey to see the future or past. Although drug user, junkie, and terms like that do exist, the cultural connotation is not even close to the idea used in Revelation.  The idea of pharmakeia is not so much, then, related to the semantic domain of drug use as it is for seeking or following a priestess' advice (who is speaking for Apollo or Athena) under the influence of drugs.  It is the semantic domain of following the advice of a god besides the Christian god that is condemned in Revelation, not the drug use.  And the sorcery idea is akin to the trickery (the metaphorical use of pharmakeia) than the black arts idea (which doesn't exist in the minds of most modern Americans).

Pharmacy is the legitimate derivative of pharmakeia.  Sorcery is more related to magic and its word derivatives.  So, now the person who reads sorcery in Revelation is victim to developing a line of thought based on false cognates at best, and at worst is victim to developing a doctrinal or value based idea based on great cultural difference.  I blame the blind loyalty of scholars on translation committees to their religious doctrines for misleading people with their translations.  But I also blame the naivety that exists among zealous religious people.  I trust they will study enough to grow out of this beginning stage of comparing two languages.