The connexion of θάλασσα with the verb ταράσσειν, that it means properly the agitated or disturbed, finds favour with Curtius (p. 596) and with Port (Etym. Forsch. vol. ii. p. 56). Schmidt dissents (vol. 1. p. 642); and urges that the predominant impression which the sea makes on the beholder is not of unrest but of rest, of quietude and not of agitation; that we must look for the word’s primary meaning in quite another direction: θάλασσα, he says, ‘ist das Meer nach seiner natürlichen Beschaffenheit, als grosse Salzflut, und dem Sinne nach von dem poetischen ἅλς durch nichts unterscheiden.’ It is according to him ‘the great salt flood.’ But not entering further into this question, it will be enough to say that, like the Latin ‘mare,’ it is the sea as contrasted with the land (
It might seem as if this distinction did not hold good on one of the two occasions upon which πέλαγος occurs in the N. T., namely
1It need hardly be observed that, adopted into Latin, it has the same meaning:
]]‘Ut pelagus tenuere rates, nee jam amplius ulla Occurrit tellus, maria undique et undique caelum.’
Virgil, aen. v. 8.
2 Hippias, in the Protagoras of Plato (338 a), charges the eloquent sophist with a φεύγειν εἰς πέλαγος τῶν λόγων, ἀποκρύψαντα γῆν. This last idiom reappears in the French ‘noyer la terre,’ applied to a ship sailing out of sight of land; as indeed in Virgil’s ‘Phaeacum abscondimus arces.
[The following Strong's numbers apply to this section:G2281,G3989.]
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