The English work “meek” is a problematic translation of the original Greek “praus”. Praus refers to a wild animal who’s been tamed, the connotation being that such a person hasn’t lost the virtue of strength of their wild nature, but added to it the virtue of civilized interaction, similar to how a tamed animal learns to do things their wild counterparts would never do.
This links to several other similar notions spread through the New Testament. For example, when Jesus:
a) Tells his disciples to be “harmless as doves” but “wise as serpents”;
b) When he orders them to first go around and learn to preach without carrying weapons, thus having to resort to fleeing when threatened, and then, after they managed to do that, instructs them to arm themselves with swords, the implication being that now they have the experience needed to know when violence can be dispensed with, and when it cannot;
c) Or when he teaches them to give the other face, which also is quite misunderstood modernly. Back then when a person of higher social standing wanted to deeply offend someone from a lower social standing, they slapped them with the back of their hands. By showing such a person “the other face” they couldn’t use that movement, and were forced to slap you with the palm of their hand, a gesture reserved to challenging someone of their same social standing, which most wouldn’t dare do.
In short, such expressions have a connotation of deliberately restraining one’s own savagery, but not letting it go, so that others may know that, while you’re fine and good and helpful, you aren’t weak, and aren’t to be trifled with. A connotation that more often than not is lost in translation.
Came here to say the same. This doesn’t necessarily diminish the original point, since I think most English-speaking Christian think “meek” here means exactly what the OP does, but I think it’s also worth saying that in this case the problem appears not to be with the text of the Bible itself, but with modern misunderstanding of the translation of it into English and the implications of that misunderstanding.
Many American Christians seem to equivocate between the naïve and informed interpretations of “meek” in a motte-and-bailey-esque fashion.
The first thing that comes to mind is submission to church elders and (sometimes) others of the same denomination, restrained (barely) savagery when dealing with people who don’t believe as they do.
There is an element of submission, but originally it meant submission of the will to the knowledge of those who know better even when what they say goes counter your base interests.
For example, going back to praus/taming/meekness, one reference Jesus use is that of his “yoke” being easy and with a light load. Yoke is a U-shaped bar used to fix two draft animals together, so they can pull loads together. One way animal trainers used back then (and maybe still use today) to train an animal in a new job is to fix his neck on one side of a yoke, and on the other a very experienced animal. This way the learned animal, doing his well practiced routine, leads the untrained one to learn them much faster. So the idea here is that, by emulating the elders, the novice gets “there” much faster, and with much less difficulty, than he would by doing things on his own. Which, considering this is in context of iron age societies, in which an established practice remained as the state-of-the-art for generations at a time, in general tended to be true.
Nowadays things change at such a fast pace that this isn’t the case anymore, so there’s a clear mismatch between what the intended purposes of such a saying was meant to convey, that is, that one should listen to those who know better, and what one derives from the saying in a modern context, which depending on circumstances ends up frequently being the opposite.
It’s worth noting that Paul teaches the exact same thing in a much more straightforward way, for now still understandable verbatim, when he said it’s good to learn about everything to then prudentially chose what to actually use from all one learned. A huge number of Christians definitely don’t do that, preferring instead to practice the misinterpreted version of the “yoke” metaphor.
Thanks for sharing this. When I was studying theology, I most enjoyed learning about the first and second century communities that circulated the gospels, and that was because of points like the one you’ve raised (although I wasn’t familiar with “praus”). It’s a shame most of it never made it into church when I was a kid! The messaging of those early communities and the messaging of modern churches are very different.
You’re welcome. There’s a stronger continuity if you look at pre-modern Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but yes, Christianity changed a lot over time.
By the way, something that may help you locate your own personal moment in your relation towards the religious teachings you received are in light of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, Kohlberg’s theory of stages of moral development, and Fowler’s theory of stages of faith development, as these helped me understand my own. They build one atop the other in this same sequence, Fowler’s depending on Kolhberg’s, which in turn depends on Piaget’s, so it’s important to read the 3 links in the order provided.
The English work “meek” is a problematic translation of the original Greek “praus”. Praus refers to a wild animal who’s been tamed, the connotation being that such a person hasn’t lost the virtue of strength of their wild nature, but added to it the virtue of civilized interaction, similar to how a tamed animal learns to do things their wild counterparts would never do.
This links to several other similar notions spread through the New Testament. For example, when Jesus:
a) Tells his disciples to be “harmless as doves” but “wise as serpents”;
b) When he orders them to first go around and learn to preach without carrying weapons, thus having to resort to fleeing when threatened, and then, after they managed to do that, instructs them to arm themselves with swords, the implication being that now they have the experience needed to know when violence can be dispensed with, and when it cannot;
c) Or when he teaches them to give the other face, which also is quite misunderstood modernly. Back then when a person of higher social standing wanted to deeply offend someone from a lower social standing, they slapped them with the back of their hands. By showing such a person “the other face” they couldn’t use that movement, and were forced to slap you with the palm of their hand, a gesture reserved to challenging someone of their same social standing, which most wouldn’t dare do.
In short, such expressions have a connotation of deliberately restraining one’s own savagery, but not letting it go, so that others may know that, while you’re fine and good and helpful, you aren’t weak, and aren’t to be trifled with. A connotation that more often than not is lost in translation.
Came here to say the same. This doesn’t necessarily diminish the original point, since I think most English-speaking Christian think “meek” here means exactly what the OP does, but I think it’s also worth saying that in this case the problem appears not to be with the text of the Bible itself, but with modern misunderstanding of the translation of it into English and the implications of that misunderstanding.
Many American Christians seem to equivocate between the naïve and informed interpretations of “meek” in a motte-and-bailey-esque fashion.
The first thing that comes to mind is submission to church elders and (sometimes) others of the same denomination, restrained (barely) savagery when dealing with people who don’t believe as they do.
There is an element of submission, but originally it meant submission of the will to the knowledge of those who know better even when what they say goes counter your base interests.
For example, going back to praus/taming/meekness, one reference Jesus use is that of his “yoke” being easy and with a light load. Yoke is a U-shaped bar used to fix two draft animals together, so they can pull loads together. One way animal trainers used back then (and maybe still use today) to train an animal in a new job is to fix his neck on one side of a yoke, and on the other a very experienced animal. This way the learned animal, doing his well practiced routine, leads the untrained one to learn them much faster. So the idea here is that, by emulating the elders, the novice gets “there” much faster, and with much less difficulty, than he would by doing things on his own. Which, considering this is in context of iron age societies, in which an established practice remained as the state-of-the-art for generations at a time, in general tended to be true.
Nowadays things change at such a fast pace that this isn’t the case anymore, so there’s a clear mismatch between what the intended purposes of such a saying was meant to convey, that is, that one should listen to those who know better, and what one derives from the saying in a modern context, which depending on circumstances ends up frequently being the opposite.
It’s worth noting that Paul teaches the exact same thing in a much more straightforward way, for now still understandable verbatim, when he said it’s good to learn about everything to then prudentially chose what to actually use from all one learned. A huge number of Christians definitely don’t do that, preferring instead to practice the misinterpreted version of the “yoke” metaphor.
Thanks for sharing this. When I was studying theology, I most enjoyed learning about the first and second century communities that circulated the gospels, and that was because of points like the one you’ve raised (although I wasn’t familiar with “praus”). It’s a shame most of it never made it into church when I was a kid! The messaging of those early communities and the messaging of modern churches are very different.
You’re welcome. There’s a stronger continuity if you look at pre-modern Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but yes, Christianity changed a lot over time.
By the way, something that may help you locate your own personal moment in your relation towards the religious teachings you received are in light of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, Kohlberg’s theory of stages of moral development, and Fowler’s theory of stages of faith development, as these helped me understand my own. They build one atop the other in this same sequence, Fowler’s depending on Kolhberg’s, which in turn depends on Piaget’s, so it’s important to read the 3 links in the order provided.