συνείδησις

Forms

σῠνείδησῐς (suneídēsis) f (genitive σῠνειδήσεως); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Ancient Greek σύνοιδα (súnoida, “to share knowledge, be conscious of”) + -σις (-sis),^[1][2] the noun of the act of “knowing together with” someone, or with oneself.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Spicq places its first appearance in Democritus (5th century BC), who speaks of awareness of one's own wrongdoing, and in the Stoic Chrysippus, for whom every living creature has a consciousness of its own constitution.^[4][3][5]

Semantic evolution

In Hellenistic Greek it meant awareness or knowledge in general: Diodorus and the Septuagint use it of inner consciousness, a midwife in Soranus has a shared knowledge of her patient's pains, and papyri use it for information sent to colleagues.^[3][5] The moral sense of “conscience”, the awareness of having done right or wrong, appears in a saying attributed to Menander (“for all mortals conscience is a god”), in the Wisdom of Solomon and in papyri: in AD 59 a slave who had caused an accident fled “aware of” what he had done.^[3][4] Spicq notes that after Democritus and Chrysippus the noun nearly disappears from literature, where the neuter participle συνειδός (suneidós) is used instead, and returns in Paul.^[4]

The word is absent from the Synoptic Gospels, but Paul makes it a central term of his moral teaching, followed by Hebrews and 1 Peter; it is the “good” or “clear” conscience before God of Acts and the Pastoral Epistles.^[4][5][3] It also passed into Coptic ⲥⲩⲛⲉⲓⲇⲏⲥⲓⲥ (suneidēsis).^[6]

Modern Greek συνείδηση (syneídisi) is a learned form of it; its senses of moral conscience and of psychological consciousness were shaped by French conscience.^[7]

Timeline

• 5th century BC – Democritus speaks of awareness of one's own wrongdoing.^[4][3]
• 3rd century BC – Chrysippus uses it of a creature's awareness of its own constitution.^[3][4]
• 2nd century BC – The Septuagint (Ecclesiastes 10:20) uses it of one's inner thoughts.^[3][8]
• 1st century BC – Diodorus Siculus uses it of awareness of a crime.^[5][3]
• 1st century AD – Paul makes it the moral conscience, and a papyrus of AD 59 uses it of a guilty slave's awareness.^[4][5]
• 2nd century AD – Papyri use it for information passed on to colleagues.^[3]
• Modern Greek – συνείδηση (syneídisi) is a learned continuation, with senses taken from French.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. Knowledge shared with another person.^[3]
2. Communication, information.^[3]
3. Consciousness, awareness of something; inner thought.^[3][5]
4. Conscience, awareness of having acted rightly or wrongly; in the New Testament, the moral conscience before God.^[3][2][5][4]
5. Complicity, guilt.^[3]

Word family

• συνειδός (suneidós)

Related words

• σύνοιδα (súnoida)
• French conscience

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Spicq, Ceslas (1994), Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, tr. James D. Ernest, 3 vols, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
5. ^ a b c d e f g Bauer, Walter; Danker, Frederick W., et al. (2000), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press
6. ^ Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
7. ^ a b Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
8. ^ Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux