Athens meaning

Meaning

She Who Has The Mind Of God

[Those Of] Joint Origin

Anonymous Yea-Sayers

She-ass, Prostitute, Always Flowing Waters

Etymology

From (1) α (a), she, (2) θεος (theos), God, and (3) νους (nous), mind.

From α- (a-), joint, and (2) -θεν (-then), origin.

From α- (a-), joint, and (2) θην (then), verily, truly so.

From תנה (tana), to hire, or יתן (yatan), to always flow.

Related names

• Via תנה (tana): Ethan, Ethanim, Ethnan, Ethni, Ithnan, Jathniel, Tartan

Athens is a city in Greece and has served as a major world center since deep antiquity, not merely concerning trade but also (and possibly more so) as the Petri dish in which the great republican and democratic experiments were conducted. Athens is the city of the great philosophers (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle). It's the birth place of theatre as we know it (drama, tragedy, comedy), and its local dialect of Greek was the dominant contributor to Koine and thus modern Greek.

It's in this specific bone-to-pick context that the city of Athens is mentioned in the Bible: four times by name and twice via the ethnonym Athenian(s): see full concordance.

The Bible writers never worked in a cultural vacuum, and were never just focused on their own local tribe or religion (as some commentators curiously hold) but always had their eye on the entire world (Genesis 12:3, 1 Kings 10:24, John 12:32) and offered along with their wisdoms, targeted commentaries on the earthly goings on.

Athens was the New York of the old world, and as we will see below, was named from its intimate association with the goddess Athena. Athena's primary epithet was Παλλας (Pallas), which derives from the verb παλλω (pallo), to hurl a spear, and throughout the ancient world the spear was widely regarded as mark of formal authority — as crucially distinct from authority by superior physical power, although a spear without a corresponding muscular or military structure would be (literally) pointless. All this in turn may explain the related noun παλλακη (pallake), meaning young girl, or a girl whose formal authority is backed up by her more muscular fatherly protector.

The spear as symbol of authority appears to be extremely ancient: the name Cain means spear and his character also signifies the emergence of domination of one man (or group) over another. Not insignificantly, Cain is the Bible's first mentioned city-builder (Genesis 4:17). The ubiquitous term κυριος (kurios), sir or lord, derives from an ancient word for spear, as does the Roman term for town council: curia.

The stories tell that Athena was the motherless daughter of Zeus, and was formed by a mechanism that may have reminded some of the motherless formation of Eve out of Adam, and others of the fatherless formation of Jesus out of Mary — whose name, in some circles, might be confused with the name Mars, the Roman god of war. The reforms that created the formidable standing Roman army, that destabilized the Republic and gave way to the Empire (hence "birthing" Emperor Augustus, the original King of Kings, Savior of the World, Son of God, and so on) were named after general Gaius Marius (Marius means Of Mars) and are known as the Marian Reforms. Nobody in the original audience of the gospels would have missed these very obvious puns.

Zeus's common attribute was the thunderbolt: an image not unlike that sketched in Psalm 29, where the author links the thunder to the voice of YHWH and the voice to the natural order, of which formal human authority is the extension (Romans 13:1). Athena was the goddess of wisdom, not at all unlike the Lady Hochma (Wisdom) described by the Hebrews (see Proverbs 8 and specifically 8:15 and 8:22).

Athena was one of the twelve Olympians. Mary's son Jesus, who had twelve disciples, was considered the singular seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:6-9, 3:16), whose uncle Nahor, son Ishmael and grandson Jacob all had twelve sons (see our article on the Abrahamic Standard Model).

Athena and her brother Ares (son of king Zeus and his sister-wife queen Hera; a couple not unlike Abraham and his sister-wife Sarah) personified the friction that happens when populations are compressed: social collision and formal conflict. But Athena embodied social wisdom and military intelligence, whereas her full brother Ares embodied mindless aggression and blind "courage". Significantly, the city of Athens became governed by its judicial council that convened on the Areopagus, or Rock of Ares, which was not simply named after Athena's bellicose brother but rather his trial, and by extension his curtailment.

The siblings Athena and Ares also served to counterbalance the twins Apollo and Artemis (children of Zeus and his cousin Leto), who rather embodied natural symbiosis: all forms of arts and reciprocal formation (the hunter forms the hunted, who forms the hunter; the artist forms the art that forms the artist). If Ares is perhaps somewhat alike Tubal-cain (the forger of all implements of bronze and iron), then Athena, Apollo and Artemis are not at all unlike Jabal, Jubal and Naamah.

Athena's other prominent epithet was Παρθενος (Parthenos), meaning Virgin. When in the 8th century BC the prophet Isaiah wrote that "the Virgin" would be with child (Isaiah 7:14), literally nobody in his original audience would have understood that to refer to anything other than Athens, the emerging city.

The Virgin — still very obviously to everybody back then — was a People, but a People that was not governed by a kingly "husband" (i.e. a formal government, a bossy entity that is not the People but overbears the People). Instead, the Virgin would be governed by her own Virgin-born Son: a government entirely and solely from the People and by the People (Isaiah 9:6).

The Son of the Virgin, still obviously, would not be some dude or some creed or some manifesto or some method, but the general human Ratio, in whom would be summarized all the phenomena of the observable world (Ephesians 1:10) and in whom would be all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). The Greeks understood the Ratio as the skeleton of the mind, even its very legs to stand on (see our article on the word σκελλω, skello, to dry up, hence our word skeleton, and the name Golgotha, which means "skull"). For centuries, Greek thinkers had represented this formidable human Ratio in a single word, namely Λογος (Logos), which John placed as God and with God at the very beginning of creation (John 1:1). And the democracy that budded in Athens contemplated as its highest ideal the concept of ελευθερια (eleutheria), or Freedom-By-Law, which Paul subsequently declared as the very purpose of the mission of Jesus of Nazareth (Galatians 5:1).

So was Jesus a historical figure? Yes, certainly so, or else we can't explain the vast and sudden proliferation of his story. But was Jesus a flesh-and-bones human individual? No, certainly not. The only "real" Jesus we have is the literary character called Jesus, who certainly embodies a historical phenomenon (certainly singularly inspired by a Person who indeed can be known personally) but certainly not a flesh-and-bones individual.

The story of Jesus of Nazareth is the story of the emergence of rational thought within mankind's greater world, not a superhero to idolize, not a savior who will do all the work while the arbitrarily chosen few sit back and enjoy the ride, but a phenomenon that extends common language, which in turn arises solely from the unbound exchanges between a vast population of respectful conversationalists: a phenomenon that is rooted solely in the hearts, minds and souls of every individual but which vastly transcends the scope and designs of any individual the way an entire hive goes beyond the visions and schemes of a single bee.

In the age of the patriarchs, the celebrated summits of the intellectual world were Egypt and Mesopotamia, which both suffered their legendary collapse — Babylon lost its famous accumulative Tower (Genesis 11:3-4) and simultaneously its contemporary Abraham, the first Hebrew and "father of all believers" (Galatians 3:7), while Egypt, wholly likewise, lost whatever it planned to store in its granary cities (Exodus 1:11) and simultaneously its residing Hebrews (see our article on the word Exodus): the people who would ultimately give the world the alphabet.

By the time of Solomon, the world's best and brightest were the Phoenicians, still the people who would give the world the alphabet: an event described in the Bible as the "building of the temple of YHWH" as a joint venture between kings Solomon of Israel and Hiram of Tyre, the radiant capital of the Phoenician world. To Tyre's far west, on the western edge of the Hittite realm, there was Troy, the celebrated hub of the European world, whose legacies survived its famous fall and were revived in Rome (see our article on Aeneas). Phoenician Tyre too fell from grace, as lavishly lamented by Ezekiel (Ezekiel 28:12), and the Semitic epicenter moved to Carthage, on Africa's northern coast across the sea from rival Rome. To the east, Mesopotamia had flourished to unprecedented heights, but by the time of Isaiah, its crafts and insights too had begun to disappoint the world (Isaiah 14:12).

In that vast and bustling world, where old centers waned and new ones rose, the currents of trade were forced to reinvent themselves and carved out its coasts and harbors, and formed vortexes and points of intersection in the most unlikely places. By the time of Isaiah, in the 8th century BC, the world's eyes began to notice an otherwise unassuming cluster of settlements that was perfectly positioned to serve as a way-station between the world's great cities: a global inn, if you will, where the merchants of the world pitched their tents and met and exchanged tales of faraway lands with their fellow travelers. It was that spontaneously emerging hub, that global inn, that in Isaiah's age began to attract the attentions of the world's wise.

Seven centuries later, however, the public Inn in the world's wilderness had grown into a vast commercial city, concerned with urban challenges much more than weary travelers. It was that very Inn in which no place was found for the Son of the Virgin. He, instead, was born in the outer fields, and was clothed not in the robes and gowns of science and philosophy but in the rough cloth of narrative and folklore, not in the time's high-budget blockbusters but in the songs and tales of local peasants who herded their flocks by day and sheltered in each other's company by night.

Pagans are tribal and competitive and flag any perceived differences as reasons to attack. Human ratio, however, understands trade and is much more concerned with similarities and even with variations that are equally legitimate as one's own familiar take on things. Our organic bodies consist of many different cell types — transparent eye cells, contracting muscle cells, hyper-communicative nerve cells, acid producing stomach cells — that are all interpretive variations of the same genetic constitution. Entirely likewise, the human ratio is a collection of legitimate variations of the same Logos, whose many different local leanings add up to a singular human identity. But humanity isn't merely a population of naked apes. There would not have been a humanity if it hadn't been for dogs and the herds they managed.

Genetically spoken, humans and chimpanzees are 99% identical, but to say that the theology of Athens was 99% similar to that of the evangelists is too generous: it's more like 84%, which is the genetic portion that humans have in common with dogs, and while humans never made friends with fellow apes, their bond with dogs formed the modern world (see this further discussed in our articles on the name Hellas, Greece, and the noun κυων, kuon, dog).

The goddess Athena was venerated as the builder and keeper of the city (in general), and we moderns sometimes forget what a marvel cities are. Cities keep us safe from the elements and wild beasts (and human wildlings) by setting us apart from the wilderness — and this is precisely what the concept of holiness is based on: protecting a thing by removing it from general use (see our article on the adjective αγιος, agios, holy). But in order for thousands or tens of thousands of individuals to live very closely together, a lot needs to happen first.

A city is contingent on a large agricultural complex that produces the food that people in the city eat. And that in turn depends on everybody understanding who gets to live in the city and who has to labor on the land and produce the food, and who has to transport the food in and the wastes out. Cities depend on formal functions, duties and social contracts paid with money, which in turn requires a mint and a deeply engrained concept of property rights, a legal apparatus that promulgates law and describes the perks and duties of property rights, a police to enforce these rules and a governing elite to control the police. A city is nearly impossible to organize without a king, and Athens' successful experiment of a kingless republic was in those days as spectacular as putting a man on the moon was in ours.

Even on a less formal level, in order for people to live literally in each other's space, they need to be able to predict each other. And that is precisely where the concepts "politeness" and "civility" come from: both these words describe the fundaments of social codes of conduct and common courtesy rules, and both are similar to or derived from words meaning city (and are the opposites of "heathen", from heath, and "pagan", from pagus, countryside). And all this caused Athena's shrines to be naturally placed at the very heart and summit of the city: the familiar noun ακροπολις (akropolis) combines the word ακρον (akron), top or point, with πολις (polis), city.

In the classical Greek mind, a city was essentially a manifestation of people "loving" their neighbors as themselves, and living in a city was essentially the same as "living in Athena", in the sense of "living in the Way of Athena". The evangelists responded in nearly complete agreement with the Way of Athena by proclaiming the Way of Christ (John 14:6). To the evangelists, "living in Christ" resulted in a "heavenly citizenship" (Philippians 3:20) and domicile in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:1). The Greeks pursued a synthetic peace among all gods and peoples, but the evangelists preached the natural Oneness of all things within the mind of Christ (Acts 17:26). Christ, they said, was born in Bethlehem, which both meant House of Bread and House of War. Hence, when Paul addressed the Athenians, he did so in the midst of the Areopagus, or Mars Hill, dedicated to the god of war (Acts 17:22).

The Greek word for bread, namely αρτος (artos) closely resembles the adverb αρτι (arti), meaning exactly right (hence too our English words art and artificial), and serves as the very emblem of a complex product from a much greater industrial complex: a city plus its government and supporting industry. As we explain in our article on the name Jew:

Only a very small subset of all hominids actually developed speech. And only a small subset of those developed script (or learned to work with it). But just like one needs an entire global economy to produce one single pencil (Milton Friedman's famous example), so the winning subsets always require the entire spectrum of participants to develop, rather alike a child (the subset) in the womb of its mother (the spectrum at large). That means that "winning" does not equal the making of losers, but rather the making of one great reality in which all elements, including the winning subset, can exist in a permanently stable symbiosis.

The name Athens comes from deep antiquity and isn't actually Greek but pre-Greek, and the city wasn't named after the goddess but the goddess was named after the city. Or so it is generally assumed by modern scholars. By the time our story plays, and the evangelists engaged the Athenians in respectful dialogue, it no longer mattered whether the chicken came first or the egg: to the Greeks, the world of cities was explained by the virtues of the Virgin, and vice versa.

Notably, the name Athens is plural (in English: two Athens, one Athen, and in Greek: two Athenai, one Athena), which very strongly suggests that the city of Athens originated as a federation of earlier settlements, or perhaps "boroughs" to stick with the New York metaphor. This idea of many being one is also very similar to the Hebrew idea of deity: Elohim, meaning God, is a plural word (one Eloah, many Elohim). Likewise, the One Light of the first creation day becomes carried by the many agents of light of the fourth day. And wholly likewise, the undivided Christ (1 Corinthians 1:13) comes with a Body that consists of many Christs (Romans 12:4, 1 Corinthians 12:12). And the best part, of course, is that the Body of Christ is feminine, even a Virgin (2 Corinthians 11:2), precisely as envisioned by the Athenians (and since a woman can only grow out of a female zygote, the gender of Jesus is rather complicated: but see our article on the verb αντλεω, antleo, to tap or drain).

In modern English our name Athena doesn't mean anything but in Greek this name bursts with meaning. Plato explains our name, rather creatively, as a compression of the term α θεονοα (a theonoa), or She Who Has The Mind Of God (Pl.Cra.407; α is Doric/Aeolic for η, the pronoun meaning she). Also not immediately obvious in English is the pleasing similarity between the noun νους (nous), mind, and ναος (naos), temple, ναυς (naus), ship, and the familiar adjective νεος (neos), new and young, which in turn ties Athena into half of the New Testament: wherever Jesus (and the disciples) are depicted in a ship or a temple or as God's wholly new creation, the Greeks would have noted the obvious nod to Athena (for instance 1 Corinthians 2:16: "For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.").

Much more obvious, however, and especially to Greek speakers who lacked Plato's imagination, is the association with the common adjective of origin, used as a postfix: -θεν (-then). Combined with the prefix of commonality, α- (a-), would render the slightly differently spelled term αθεν (athen) the meaning of "origin mate" or "person from the same place" (compare the word for brother: αδελφος, adelphos, which literally means womb-mate). That would make αθεν (athen), "origin mate" the opposite of αλλαχοθεν (allachothen), "from somewhere else". And that, pretty much, sums up the core difference between Athenian theology and the Gospel of Jesus Christ: to the Athenians, the nature of a unified people derived from their common origin but to the evangelists, the nature of a unified people derives from their shared destiny. The strongly influential Greek philosopher Aristotle cemented the idea of God as the Prime Mover, which is very Greek, whereas the evangelists depicted God as the Ultimate Attractor (John 12:32). And that's no minor distinction.

Another word of interest is the enclitic particle θην (then), which expresses strong conformation: very truly so. This word obviously corresponds to the Hebrew term Amen, which shows up untranslated all over the New Testament, possibly most strikingly in Revelation 3:14, "These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God" (see the full NT concordance of Amen). That would make the Athenians the Unanimous Yea-Sayers.

The verb τιθηνεω (titheneo) means to take care of or nurse, and the verb ευθηνεω (eutheneo) means to flourish, thrive or prosper. These two words are thought to relate to θηλη (thele), nipple, and all of them are thought to derive from the same PIE root "deh-", to suck, hence too the adjective θηλυς (thelus), female, and possibly the verb θαω (thao), to suck, which also exists in the form θαομαι (thaomai), which is identical to the verb θαομαι (thaomai), meaning to marvel or wonder, from which come English words like theater and theory, and possibly even the familiar Greek word θεος (theos), or God.

In our article on Colossae, we point out that the 5th century BC Greek historian Herodotus recorded a vast and formative trade between the early (pre-) Greeks and their Semitic visitors: the same Phoenicians who had perfected the alphabet (and had joined Solomon in the building of the temple of YHWH in Jerusalem) and imported the alphabet into the Greek language basin, where it was adapted into the Greek one (from whence the Latin one, which is the one you are reading now).

Here at Abarim Publications we suspect that the imports of Semitic elements of language into Greek did not stop at the alphabet but also included a slew of handy terms to boot up the later so famous Greek wisdom tradition (see our article on the many Hebrew roots of the Greek language). We further suspect that the name Colossae may actually stem from the Hebrew verb כלא (kala'), to shut in or shut up, and the name Corinth from the verb כרר (karar), to encircle and fill. That said, we suspect that the name Athens likewise originated in a Hebrew term, and ultimately relates to the verb תנן (tanan):

And that would tie Athens into half of the Old Testament as well.

Our cluster of verbs relates to anything anarchistic, kingless or husbandless: republics, prostitutes and she-asses. Israel's first king was Saul of Benjamin, who enters the Biblical stage hunting for the lost donkeys (indeed the word used is אתון, 'aton, she-ass) of his father Kish. Thanks to modern archeology, we've known for over half a century now that the stories of David and Solomon are not about the kind of thing that leaves traces in the ground. And the building of the temple of Solomon rather obviously coincides with the rise of information technology and specifically the perfection of the Hebrew/Phoenician alphabet. That very strongly suggests that the opening chords of the story of Saul is not about losing control over a bunch of donkeys but rather a band of uppity trading posts. (Saul's maniacal hurling of his spear to David would thus correspond to the verb παλλω, pallo, we discuss above, and all this in turn recalls the spear thrust in Jesus' side.)

The magnificent Book of Job is very old and set in the patriarchal period (long before Saul). It's clearly presented as a fable — Eliphaz is the elephant, Zophar the bird, Bildad the grazing herd animal, satan the roaring lion and Job and Elihu older and younger hominins — but mostly reviews the theologies of the old world, which existed in the great mental realm of humanity like animals in the biosphere (in our riveting e-book How The Mind Works, we propose that these two realms are self-similar: the great human kosmos emerges from and is indeed precisely as diverse as the biological world). In Job 11:12, friend Zophar notes: "An idiot (איש נבוב 'ish nabob) will become intelligent (לבב, labab) when the foal (עיר, 'ayir) of a wild donkey (פרא, pere') is born (ילד, yalad) a man (אדם, 'adam)," which at first glance seems rather insensitive. But not so at second glance.

The term 'ish nabob speaks of a "hollow man" and the verb labab means "to get a heart" (bringing to mind the Tin Woodman of the Wizard of Oz). The word for foal is actually another word for donkey, but this one is spelled the same as the word for city: עיר ('ir). And the word that's here commonly translated with donkey, namely פרא (pere'), appears to relate to the root פרר (parar), to split or divide. That at once reminds the attentive reader of our English word "science," which comes from the Greek verb σχιζω (schizo), to break, split or divide. In Hebrew, such a thing would be expressed by the verb בין (bin), to separate or distinguish: בין (ben) means "between". This word in turn is highly similar to the familiar noun בן (ben), meaning son. Moreover, the noun אבן ('eben) means stone; verb בנה (bana) means to build; בת (bat) means daughter and בית (bayit) means temple.

So yes, as part of a fable Zophar speaks of donkeys and foals, but transposed into the human world, Zophar says that Hollow Man will get a Heart when Mankind brings forth a City of Reason, which is the Home of Love: to the Evangelists, that amounted to God living in New Jerusalem (1 John 4:8, Revelation 21:22 ), to the Greeks this spoke of Aphrodite, to Dorothy Gale it was the Emerald City, to Jay Gatsby it was the Green Lantern on Daisy's Dock (see our article on How Circumcision Created the Modern World).

So when in the 6th century BC the prophet Zechariah wrote: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; he is just and endowed with salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey (חמור, hamor), even on a colt (עיר, 'ayir), the foal (בן, ben) of a she-ass (אתון, 'aton)" (Zechariah 9:9, also see Genesis 49:10-11), not many in the prophet's original audience would have failed to link "the daughter of Jerusalem" to kingless Athens (see Matthew 21:5).

The word for donkey that Zechariah uses, namely חמור (hamor) relates to a verb that describes slow flowing viscous liquid. This is remarkable because the noun אתן ('atan), meaning she-ass, is identical to the adjective אתן ('atan) meaning ever-flowing. By the time the evangelists wrote, the once so celebrated shine of Athens (her philosophies, sciences, art and statecraft) had been subsumed and weaponized by the Romans. Ultimately, John the Revelator describes in horror how the "great city that reigns over the kings of the earth" (17:18) had become the Mother of All Harlots (17:5), seated on many waters (17:15).

It should be remembered that the ancient world was mechanized far less than our modern one, but a city was widely recognized as a synthetic island in a natural wilderness. That means that the word "city" conveys the idea of a large industrial complex, much rather than a mere cluster of brick buildings: it describes the dynamic machine of it, much rather than the static streets and houses. This in turn means that our word "city" rather describes the "machinery of state" or a government based not on the acute concerns of flesh-and-blood elders but rather on a monstrous mechanism of interlocked laws and regulations. When Paul wrote, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12), he did not speak of angels and demons (as is often suggested) but rather about the beastly machine of state: the merciless and incomprehensible and unpredictable artificial intelligence of any corpus legis.

It is perhaps not immediately clear to everybody what the ultimate form of this Mother of All Harlots might be, but a hint may come from the name of the national deity of Greece, namely Appollo (half-brother of Athena), which obviously corresponds to the name Apollyon, meaning Destroyer (Revelation 9:11).