The "World" as "Society"

Jesus uses three different Greek words that are translated as "world" in one version or another of the English Bible. The most common one is discussed here. It is kosmos, a word that describes the world as human society. The word for the planet and the world of nature is different (as we explain here).

The Greek Word for “World”

The word translated as “world” doesn’t actually mean “world.” In Greek, kosmos, (κόσμος) means "order," "good order," "world order," "universe," and "the world of men." Jesus uses this noun in sixty-three verses. It has a verb form, kosmeô, which means "to order," "to arrange," "to rule," "to adorn" (especially women), and "to equip." It also means controlling and arranging an army.

Notice how kosmos doesn’t mean “world” in any generic sense. Also notice that it doesn’t mean “order” in the general sense of a Divine order. It specifically refers to the order created by people. It refers to the social hierarchy that exists as any given time in any society. This is especially true in the way that Jesus uses it. In English, the word “society” comes closes to this meaning.

Notice that kosmos is also different from the English derivative, “cosmos.” The English word refers to the universe, but the Greek this was understood not to includer the “sky,” It is what is universal in society. It never describes the larger cosmos of stars and galaxies. It means civilization as a whole, and the political powers and divisions of that universe. This is the kosmos of the English word, cosmopolitan, which combines the kosmos with the word, polis, the Greek word meaning "city,” meaning “civil society.” As we will see, Jesus connects the idea of the kosmos with “the city” as well.

More to generally, the kosmos is the man-made world, the artificial world. It includes not only our physical products, our cities, and our tools, but also our man-made culture: our ideas, our sciences, and so on. All these things go into shaping people today. Jesus saw them as the seeds from which our thoughts are grown.

Jesus’s Relationship with Society

When it comes to society, Jesus saw himself as the extreme outsider. Jesus was not shaped by the social order. In one sense, kosmos is the opposite of the realm of the sky. As he tells those who challenge him in John 8:23:

NIV: You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

Listeners Heard:  You yourselves are from the underneath. I myself am from the above. You yourselves are from this society here. I myself do not exist from this society here.

Notice how specifically Jesus separated the two realms of power. One is here, the other is elsewhere, though near. One it better than the other, above,” and one is worse, “below.” Kosmos is the world into which children are born (John 16:21). He uses kosmos to describe the archetype of the masculine, ruling aspect of civilization, the one that becomes corrupt and oppressive as opposed to the female word, the mother Earth, the world of nature. Jesus says very different things when talking about kosmos and talking about the mother earth, ge.

He never says that he came to earth (ge). He always says that he came into the world (kosmos). Jesus’s mother may be earth, but kosmos is not his Father. Ge is the world of nature, created by the Divine. Kosmos fathers those of this world. In John 16:28, he says:

NIV: I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

Listeners Heard: I came out from the Father, and I have shown up into this society. In turn, I leave this society and proceed before the Father.

The word translated as “go/proceed” has the double meaning of “departing from life” so the sense is that this is a world of temporary life, a world that cannot sustain us in any long-lasting way.

Our Role in the World

The key verse here is Matthew 5:14:

NIV: You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

Listeners Heard: You yourselves are the light of this society. A city has no power to be concealed seating itself on top of a hill.

“Light” is Jesus’s metaphor for knowledge as we discuss in this article. So, society encapsulates the knowledge of people, that is, what we know how to do.

Notice here how again the idea of “society” is connected to the concept of “city.” In Jesus’s era, cities were the centers of civilization much more than countries were. The world was ruled, not by Italy, a country, but by Rome, a city. The “city on a hill” could be either Rome or Jersusalem, since both were built on hills.

Jesus has a role in creating our light in the world, but it is lost in our English translation of John 12:46:

NIV: I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.

Listeners Heard:  I myself have started a light in this society so that everyone trusting as much as me might not remain in this darkness.

The key veb here is correctly translated as “started.” This is the most common meaning of the Greek verb translated as “come” when it takes an object. The Biblical translators, for some reason, do not like this meaning and always gravitate to “come” even when it doesn’t fit. I personally love it because it clarifies verses such as this.

Final Thoughts

There are fifty more verses I could go through, and all of them are clarified by translating kosmos as “society.” Sometime, Jesus is referring to his specific society, Galilee and Judea, but more commonly he is referring to the common society of the Roman world. When Jesus refers to the “princes” of the world, he is refering to those on the top of his society. The literal meaning of the Greek word translated as “prince” is “a high one,” And, of course, we can extend all these ideas to the world of human civilization generally with its various types of rulers.

I should end by clarifying what Jesus means by “the end of the world.” He is not referring to the planet. He is referring to a given society. His primary reference was the end of Judea, whcih was coming in his aposles’ lifetimes.