The "Earth" as Nature

Is Jesus contradicting himself when he says, “I am not of this world,” (John 8:23) and then that he has “power on earth”?” (Matthew 9:6)” In English, we think of the “world” and the “earth” as near synonyms. In Greek, they are very different concepts. Once we understand what they really mean, we can see clearly that there is always a huge difference between what Jesus says about the “world” and the “earth.”

We discussed the two most common Greek words translated as the “world” in an earlier article. While the Greek word, kosmos, best translated as “world,” refers to our social order, the Greek word for “earth” is both similar and very different than our English word “earth.” If we want a deeper understanding of Jesus’s words, we must appreciate the difference. While most translators are sloppy about the words translated as “world,” they respect the Greek word for “earth,” seldom, if ever, translating it into “world.”

The Greek word for “earth” is ge (γῆς). Like our English word, it means the “ground,” “dirt,” and, more generally, “land.” The word doesn’t refer to the “planet” as we use it. Instead, it was a basic element of nature. In most ancient cultures, except for Judean, of course, the “earth” was also a goddess, the Earth Mother. Her name in Greek was the same as the word for “earth,” Ge. Modern earth worshipers render this today in English as, Gaia. This is why the word is feminine. When we refer to “mother nature,” we come closer to the ancient concept of “earth.” As we will see, Jesus sometimes uses the word “earth” in the same way we use the word “nature.”

To the people of Jesus’s era, earth was one of the four basic elements along with fire, water, and air. Aristotle added a fifth element, the aether, or quintessence, which was eternal, the stuff of the stars and the sky. The basic elements and their different combinations were very developed concepts in many ancient philosophies, from Greece to China. They were extended to connect every form of science, from physics to medicine.

In the Bible, each of the four elements plays a role in creation. First came the light of fire, “Let there be light.” Then came the separation of water and sky, then land and water. The dust of the earth was the material out of which humanity was formed. Mother Nature gave birth to our natures.

Jesus’s Five Elements

Jesus used all these elements as part of his teaching. We have described four of these elements in various posts: the fire of purification, the water of baptism, the air as the realm of the skies, and aether as spirit. The :earth” was just as basic to his teaching, but easier to overlook because we confuse the word as meaning “the world.”

Jesus used the word “earth” in fifty nine verses. He contrasts the ge, “earth,” with ouranos, “heaven,” that is, the “sky,” in sixteen verses. He never contrasts the heaven/sky with kosmos, the word translated as “world.” “Earth” is feminine, so its opposite, “sky,” is masculine. Jesus used the two terms together to describe the whole of the temporal, created universe. In five of Jesus’s verses, he describes heaven and earth as “passing away.” The two elements are united by their temporary nature. The sky and earth, however, were understood to have very different laws. Jesus describes many aspects of the sky realm as the opposite of the earthly realm: the first will be last.

Jesus saw ge as the God-made world, what we call natural as opposed to man-made or artificial. He describes it as the productive potential of nature, the fertile mother of life. Jesus recognized that the earth has the power to produce by its very nature in Mark 4:28:

KJV: For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself;
Listeners Heard: Automatically, this earth bears fruit.

Many of his parables refer to using the earth as dirt in productive ways. His Parable of the Seeds described different types of “earth” into which seeds can fall. These different types of earth demonstrate the differences in potential. This is symbolic of humanity. Because we are made of different dirt from the earth, we all have different potentials.

In the Bible, the word for “earth” is also used to refer to various “lands” with the meaning of various nations or regions. However, Jesus uses it in this way only to refer to the “lands” of Sodom and Gamora.

Productive, Cold, and Dry

Jesus’s earliest use of ge was at the Sermon of the Mount, which he refers to the “earth” in two ways that stand out from all his other “earth” references.

In Matthew 5:5, he describes the “earth” as what is inherited.

NIV: Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Listeners Heard:  Fortunate the tamed ones because they themselves will inherit the earth.

The word translated as “meek” means “tamed” in the sense of how animals are tamed to make them useful. This verse has one meaning if we think of “earth” as the land, which was passed down through the generations if those generations lived in peace. Symbolically, this verse also means the “earth” in the sense of our human nature. We are productive because we produce next generation. Today, we might say they inherit our DNA, but people have always said that children inherit their parent’s “nature” in the sense of their earth element.

Jesus’s next reference to ‘earth” is Matthew 5:13. It is a subtle contradiction to this idea of productivity.

NIV: You are the salt of the earth.

Salt and earth are both connected because they are both types of dirt. How? By the way the ancients divided the elements into dry and wet, cold and hot. Both salt and the dirt are cold and dry. This makes them both earth. In contrast, water is cold and wet, air is hot and wet, and fire is hot and dry. However, in another sense, salt is the opposite of earth because nothing grows in it. Instead, the salt of earth acts as a preservative.

Jesus has power on the “earth,” that is, in the natural realm. His miracle demonstrate control over nature (Matthew 9:6, Mark 2:11, and Luke 5:24). His power of healing and controlling the wind and waves was a power over the earthly realm. As he said, his kingdom was “not of this world,” that is, the social order. He does not control men. However, his power extended to all that was nature.

When Jesus talks about winning recognition for his father, it is in nature order not the social order.

NIV: I have brought you glory on earth...
Listeners Heard: I myself recognized you on the earth…

This is a more revolutionary statement than it appears. Where others see the natural order, Jesus sees his father. Where people praise the power of nature, Jesus gives praise to his father.

Final Thoughts

Jesus says very different things when talking about the world, kosmos, the social order, and when he talks about ge, the earth and nature. While women bear children and the ground bears fruit, it is the world, the social order, into which children are born (John 16:21) and into which Jesus came. While we may be the “salt of the earth,” that which preserves nature, we are also the “light of the world,” that which illuminates our social order.