Stachys meaning

Meaning

Ear Of Grain, Scribble, Epistle

Etymology

From the noun σταχυς (stachus), an ear of grain.

The name Stachys appears only once in the Bible, namely in Romans 16:9, where Paul instructs his readers to "greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and Stachys my beloved." As we point out frequently (see our article on Onesimus), Paul's letters were works of staggering genius that, when released upon the open market, quickly eclipsed even Homer and Julius Caesar and any of the classics.

Since Rome was killing the People of the Way, and Paul's letters were meant to be read publicly, Paul's list of names in his letter to the Romans almost certainly does not convey the personal names of his personal friends, but rather refer to figures, scenes or events from general history and literature. Furthermore, his flowery epithets (beloved, co-worker), all depend on his references to Christ (which means Anointed, which specifically described the Jewish King, which makes all references to the Gospel acts of high treason), who in turn embodied the Logos (which today we call Science).

Paul was not speaking of some religion, and he certainly had no mind of creating a personality cult around a wise young teacher of a few decades hence. Instead, he was talking about the thing that all Jewish texts were talking about: information technology, the specific technology that is required to effectively run any empire (see our article on YHWH).

It's not even certain that the name Stachys is actually a name, because if it is, it's highly unique (which is unusual for a name). Here at Abarim Publications we suspect that Paul used the "name" Stachys (means Ear Of Grain) to remind of the Hebrew word אביב ('abib), which means ear of barley, and which is also the name of the first month of the Hebrew year, namely Abib, the month of the Exodus and thus of Passover, and the month in which Moses first erected the tabernacle (see our article on the Hebrew calendar).

Note that the word for Passover, namely פסח (pesah), comes from the Hebrew word for lame, namely פסח (piseah), and that the paralytic whom Peter healed shared his name with the mythological founder of the Roman people: Aeneas. This man had been paralyzed for eight years, which obviously refers to Octavian, the original name of Augustus, who had created the Roman Empire.

The name Stachys is identical to the noun σταχυς (stachus), which describes an ear of grain:

The name Stachys means Ear Of Grain, but it's unlikely that Stachys was an otherwise inconsequential man living in Rome to whom Paul sent his fraternal salutations. Instead, this name obviously refers to the resurrection of the Christ and the Body that would subsequently assemble. If the Logos was the Bread of Heaven — the word for bread is αρτος (artos), which looks rather similar to the adjective αρτιος (artios), meaning "precisely right" — then the saints are kernels of grain (John 12:24), who await their harvesting (Matthew 9:37). And if words are kernels of grain that are in danger of falling among thorns (Matthew 13:3), then an ear of grain is a Scribble or a quick letter that someone writes and submits to the open market, where it is chewed and processed and built upon and perfected, until it is kneaded into the dough that, in fire, becomes the bread.

The postal service, from which grew the Internet, was invented in Persia, where also the Jews were living. The Jews had wisdom schools, which all had to stay up to snuff with what all the others were doing, so although there's no real proof, it's pretty safe to assume that the Jews invented the postal service. The Romans weaponized it, and built their road system to deploy their armies and their postal service to dispense commands. The epistolary endeavors of Paul and company piggybacked upon that very military road system. Jesus called himself the Way (or Road), and the name of the mother of Jesus, namely Mary, Maria, Marian or Miriam, was conveniently similar to the name Marius who in the late 2nd century BC reformed the Roman army (the changes he made created the infamous imperial army, and are called the Marian reforms). The name Marius came from the gens Maria, which in turn is probably related to the name Mars, of the Roman god of war.

An additional pun: the Greek language had a habit of forming words by sticking a sigma in front of an existing word, resulting in two words with related or somewhat comparable meanings (see our article on σειρα, seira, for a brief discussion of this phenomenon). That means that our word σταχυς (stachus), ear of grain, may very well be derived from the adjective ταχυς (tachus), quick or swift. The Hebrew languages had no such habit, but the word סביב (sabib) means surrounding, circuit or round about, which not only pegs the core idea of the postal service but is also somewhat synonymous to the word Galilee, which means district or region, from the same verb גלל (galal), to roll or encircle, from which also comes the name Gilead. Gilead, of course, was where the sibboleth challenge originated. Like σταχυς (stachus), the word שבלת sibboleth means ear of grain.