Steve,
You wrote:
It seems that the word for punishment is a Greek word for corrective discipline. Whether it can sometimes mean merely vindictive punishment or not has been debated here, but the meaning of "correction" as a primary meaning seems indisputable.
That is a misleading statement. I am not accusing you of deliberately misleading anyone; I know you would not do that, but your statement is like saying a "gay" man is someone who is happy, not recognizing the change in meaning of a word.
I offer some comments from The Apologists Bible Commentary on the Greek word kolasis:
The word translated "punishment" reflects the common meaning of the word in Koine Greek. The word occurs in over 130 documents contemporary with the Greek New Testament, and in all cases, the translation "punishment" is correct.
The difficulty with much of the scholarship regarding kolasis is that it is outdated, lacking information since discovered in papyri that was not available at the time:
Before we look at each references in detail, I would note that these sources are dated. All but the last two are 19th Century lexicons. Berry is fairly recent, but is a classical Greek lexicon, not a New Testament Greek lexicon. Why is this important? The discoveries and publication of the various papyri at the end of the 19th century and continuing in the early decades of the 20th brought a new understanding - and appreciation - for the fact that Koine Greek was a developed language, with significant differences from Classic, or Attic, Greek. Many of the lexicographers of the 19th century simply did not have access to the papyrological evidence, and so their lexicons favored more Classic definitions. This is why you won't find these lexical sources showing up in many scholarly papers - if any! The standard works are BAGD, Moulton & Milligan, Louw & Nida, and the TDNT.
Moulton & Milligan, BAGD, and Thayer list dozens of occurrences of KOLASIS in late classical and early Christian documents, and cite "punishment" as the proper translation in each case. There are no other meanings listed for KOLASIS in any of these lexicons. Here is just one example from Moulton and Milligan: "for the evil doers among men receive their reward not among the living only, but also await punishment (KOLASIN) and much torment" (Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 840).
It is true that KOLASIS is derived etymologically from KOLAZÔ. It is also true that in Classic Greek, KOLAZÔ means "to prune, to cut off." However, there are several problems with asserting that KOLASIS should be properly translated "cutting off" because of its relationship with KOLAZÔ. First, determining the meaning of a word by its derivation is an example of the "etymological fallacy." D.A. Carson states that presuming that a word's meaning is bound up with its root or roots is "linguistic nonsense" (Carson, Fallacies, p. 28). Words may or may not share semantic range with their etymological forebears. In many cases, they do not. The fact that all modern lexicons define KOLASIS as "punishment" and not one lists "cutting off" as a possible definition, suggests that it does not mean "cutting off," regardless of what KOLAZÔ may mean.
When I read your comments about kolasis I immediately thought of DA Carson's "Exegetical Fallacies".
Second, KOLAZÔ had the meaning "to prune, to cut off" in Classical Greek. However, as the Liddell-Scott lexicon shows, even in classical times, it began to take on the meaning of chastisement or punishment:
to chastise, punish, Sophocles, Euripides, etc.:—Med. to get a person punished, Aristophanes, Plato:—Pass. to be punished, Xenophon. (LS)
While KOLAZÔ may have originally had the meaning "cut off," it was commonly used in late Classical Greek and in Koine Greek to mean "punish, chastise, restrain." A quick check of the modern lexicons will confirm this fact:
Prop[erly] to lop, prune as trees, wings ... to chastise, correct, punish: so in the N.T. (Thayer)
"To cut short," "to lop," "to trim," and figuratively a. "to impede," "restrain," and b. "to punish" ... A common use is for divine chastisement....The NT uses kolazw in Acts 4:18 and 2 Peter 2:9. Only the latter refers to God's punishment (TDNT)
Punish (BAGD) - This lexicon lists dozens of examples from literature contemporary with the NT and lists "punish" as the only meaning for kolazw in this time period.
Moulton & Milligan suggest that kolazw retains the meaning "correcting," "cutting down" in later documents, such as Galen, but note that "punish" is the proper translation in the NT, and cite several contemporary sources supporting this meaning.
Thus, we may conclude that there is no lexical support for the NWT translation of KOLASIS in Matthew 25:46. The NWT (New World Translation) offers an anachronistic rendering, consistent with its theology but not with common usage in New Testament times.
