“Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love,” Romans 12:10.

by Feb 5, 2010Exegesis, KJV, NTScholarship

Leon Morris makes an interesting note on φιλόστοργοι (philostorgoi—a combination of φίλος [philos] and στοργή [storge]) in Romans 12:10:

KJV has “Be kindly affectioned”, where “kindly” is used in its original sense, “referring to kin.”
—The Epistle to the Romans, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 445.

If he’s right, I can add one more to the list of verses I never understood in the KJV because of the changes English has undergone in the last 400 years. I suspect that few people outside English philologists understood it either.

To be perfectly fair, I’m not sure that the OED supports Morris’s reading, but his argument still seems likely to be true since στοργή (storge) refers to a love for one’s kin, something that the KJV would otherwise not be reflecting.

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