I was going through my Greek vocabulary, and I came across something which caught my attention.
The ancient Greek word (in English letters) "deinos" translates to the adjectives "terrible" and "clever." The Greeks equated being clever with being terrible.
Is being clever necessarily a terrible thing? Asking this question, I pulled out my trusty lexicon of biblical Greek--yes, a version of Greek different from what I'm learning in class--and, though the Bible apparently never uses deinos, it does use our word's adverb twice: once in Matthew 8:6, and another time in Luke 11:53.
In Matthew's usage of the word, a servant is suffering terribly. In Luke's usage, the Pharisees are with Christ, and they're pressing him hard and are provoking him--the Pharisees are vehement, according to my lexicon. The Pharisees are acting cleverly, according to my textbook's definition. With the suffering servant, the Pharisees are acting deinos-ly.
So in biblical Greek, deinos is used in a negative context. A suffering servant. Provoking Pharisees. My textbook of classical Greek gives the word the same context as does biblical Greek. Deinos is to be clever, which is to be terrible.
When did we change the meaning? When did we begin to ascribe clever-ness as something of virtue to be praised? For example we praise street smarts, which are afterall being clever on the street. Certainly we don't look down on street smarts, certainly we don't label them as terrible--in fact, we want those with book smarts to have street smarts as well (and the expectation is never the other way around). Certainly one wouldn't argue street smarts to be something terrible to have.
Why then could one consider clever-ness to be equal with something terrible?
And for next time: makarios: "happy" and "blessed." In the words of Christ, "Makarios are the merciful" and so forth. Are the blessed always happy? | 
