APPENDIX XIX (Reference: p. 93)
Meaning Of  in the New Testament.
It is, of course, hardly necessary to say that a noun formed from a verb need not have the same basic meaning and that therefore the verb cannot be used to prove anything about the meaning of the noun. In the New Testament there is a recurrent phrase, "the foundation of the world", which many writers, who view Gen. 1. 2 as a description of catastrophe, take to be an allusion. On the basis of the verbal root  they argue (as I myself have done) that the noun means "disruption", since the verb means "to cast down". Origen equated the verbal root Of  with the Latin dejicere, "to throw down". In this he is essentially correct. And in the LXX the verb is similarly used to substitute for the following Hebrew words, all of which are essentially similar in meaning:
 (Haras) to tear down, break down, devastate, overthrow, destroy, extirpate.
 (Laqah) to take, lay hold of, seize, snatch away, captivate.
 (Natash) to stretch or spread out, scatter abroad, reject, let loose, disperse, give up.
 (Naphal) to fall, fall away, fall out, fail, hurl down, cast down, fall upon (attack).
 (Nathatz) to break down, destroy, smash down.
 (Paratz) to break, demolish, scatter, breakup, spread abroad.
 (Satam) to lurk for, way-lay, entrap.
 (Shahath) to break to pieces, destroy , ruin, lay waste, devastate, violate, injure, corrupt.
 (Shaphel) to fall or sink down, to be laid low, humiliate, humble.
This clearly establishes the meaning of the verb, but what of the noun formulated from it? In classical Greek it came to have the basic meaning of "foundation" as signifying what has been cast down or thrown down first. It is never found with the meaning of destruction or disruption. In II Macc. 2. 29 the noun occurs in a context which indicates that the classical sense of "foundation" is intended here also.
In the New Testament there is little doubt that the verbal form has the classical meaning of "casting down" or "casting out", as in II Cor. 4. 9 and Rev. 12. 10 for example, or "giving birth to" in Heb. 11. 11, ie. , "founding" a new line.
On the basis of Heb. 6. 1 which reads, "Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God", the learned commentator Olshausen argues that we must assume the word is here being used in its most fundamental sense of "casting down", and so of demolishing or destroying. "For", he argues, "the apostle would assuredly not have dissuaded men from laying again the foundation of repentance, in the case of its having been destroyed".
In this passage, moreover, the word for "foundation" is not  as it might have been in classical Greek, but  (themelios) as it normally is in the New Testament. Wherever the New Testament is speaking of a true "foundation", this word themelios is found. The following references will make this clear:
Luke 6.48-49
Luke 14. 29
Acts 12. 26
Rom. 15.20
I Cor.3,10,11,12
Eph.2.20
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1 Tim. 6. 19
11 Tim. 2. 19
Heb. 1. 10 (as a verb)
Heb. 6. 1
Heb.11.10
Rev.21.14-19
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Thus if there is a word in New Testament Greek, the meaning of which is unequivocably and unambiguously "foundation", it is the word themelios. In the recurrent phrase, "the foundation of the world", one m ight reasonably, therefore, have expected to find this word used, if the meaning really is the foundation of the world - On the other hand, to render it, "the disruption of the world", and thereby make it a reference back to a catastrophe implied in Gen, 1. 2, requires that the noun be given a meaning for which we have no other precedent in Greek literature. Nor did  , apparently, come by custom to be associated with the word  ("world"), the word which follows it, as a kind of "accepted formula" for the creation, because elsewhere (when clearly speaking of the creation) the phrase used is  , or  : le. , "from the beginning of the world" (as in Matt. 24. 21) or "from the beginning of the creation" (as in II Pe. 3.4). So also in Mark 10. 6 and 13. 19. Since the word  means "order", it would not be surprising if the writers of the New Testament had coined a new phrase to describe the catastrophe, referring to it thereafter as the "disruption of the world order". They may then have used it as a reference point with respect to God's redemptive plans - for this may well have been the first overt rebellion of the created order against the authority of the Creator.
The great majority of Greek scholars would undoubtedly object to any claim that the noun can ever mean "destruction" on the grounds that "there is no evidence for it". But this is circular reasoning. For there is no evidence only provided that we refuse to allow  to be rendered "disruption" in the New Testament. Otherwise, the argument has no force whatever. One cannot disallow something by merely asserting it to be unallowable to start with and saying it cannot be allowed because there is no evidence for it! Classical Greek and New Testament Greek do not always agree. Some words in the New Testament are given meanings which they do not hold in classical Greek, and Heb. 6. 1 strongly supports the idea that  may be one such word.
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