Two clusters of words immediately stand out in the passages we are examining: righteous, righteousness, and the righteousness of God on the one hand, and faith, belief, and believe on the other. These terms appear repeatedly in Paul’s teaching and are central to his thought. That alone makes them worth careful and sustained attention.
When we study New Testament language, we must remember that these words come from two very different worlds of thought. They are Greek words, shaped by Greek life, culture, and philosophy, and they draw meaning from the rich body of classical Greek literature. At the same time, the authors who used them were Jews, deeply immersed in the Hebrew Scriptures and shaped by Hebrew ways of thinking. The Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Old Testament — forms a crucial bridge between these worlds, translating Hebrew ideas into Greek language. Any serious study of New Testament terms must therefore consider both their use in classical Greek and their role as Greek equivalents of familiar Hebrew concepts.
