Helps

VIEW:36 DATA:01-04-2020
HELPS.—Act_27:17 ‘they used helps, undergirding the ships.’ The reference is to ‘cables passed round the hull of the ship, and tightly secured on deck, to prevent the timbers from starting, especially amidships, where in ancient vessels with one large mast the strain was very great. The technical English word is frapping, but the process has only been rarely employed since the early part of the century, owing to improvements in shipbuilding’ (Page’s Acts of the Apostles; see Smith’s Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul, p. 105).
HELPS.—In 1Co_12:28 St. Paul, in order to show the diversity in unity found in the Church as the body of Christ, gives a list of services performed by various members of the churchly body. In the course of his enumeration he uses two Gr. nouns (antilçmpseis and kybernçseis) employed nowhere else in the NT, and rendered in EV [Note: English Version.] ‘helps,’ ‘governments.’ ‘Helps’ may suggest a lowly kind of service, as of one who acts as assistant to a superior. The usage of the Gr. word, however, both in the LXX [Note: Septuagint.] and in the papyri, points to succour given to the needy by those who are stronger; and this is borne out for the NT when the same word in its verbal form occurs in St. Paul’s exhortation to the elders of the Ephesian Church to ‘help the weak’ (Act_20:35 RV [Note: Revised Version.] ). ‘Helps’ in this list of churchly gifts and services thus denotes such attentions to the poor and afflicted as were specially assigned at a later time to the office of the deacon; while ‘governments’ (RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ‘wise counsels’) suggests that rule and guidance which afterwards fell to presbyters or bishops.
We are not to think, however, that there is any reference in this passage to deacons and bishops as Church officials. The fact that ‘helps’ are named before ‘governments,’ and especially that abstract terms are used instead of concrete and personal ones as in the earlier part of the list, shows that it is functions, not offices, of which the Apostle is thinking throughout. The analogy of Act_20:35, moreover, where it is presbyters (Act_20:17 RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ) or bishops (Act_20:28 RV [Note: Revised Version.] ) that are exhorted to help the weak, is against the supposition that in an Ep. so early as 1 Cor. ‘helps’ and ‘governments’ corresponded to deacons and bishops. ‘Helps,’ as Hort says (Chr. Ecclesia, p. 159), are ‘anything that could be done for poor or weak or outcast brethren, either by rich or powerful or influential brethren, or by the devotion of those who stood on no such eminence.’ ‘Governments,’ again, refers to ‘men who by wise counsels did for the community what the steersman or pilot does for the ship.’
J. C. Lambert.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909


One class of ministrations in the early church, antileepsiees (1Co_12:28). A lower department, as "governments" are a higher; for instance, deacons who helped in relieving the poor, baptizing and preaching, subordinate to higher ministers (Act_6:1-10; Act_8:5-17); others helped with their time and means in the Lord's cause (1Co_13:3; Num_11:17). Americans similarly use "helps" for "helpers." In Rom_12:8 "he that giveth" answers to "helps," "he that ruleth" to "governments," as bishops or presbyters (1Ti_5:17; Heb_13:17; Heb_13:24).
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.


In the New Testament it occurs once, viz. in the enumeration of the several orders or classes of persons possessing miraculous gifts among the primitive Christians (1Co_12:28), where it seems to be used by metonymy, the abstract for the concrete, and to mean helpers; like the words 'miracles,' i.e. workers of miracles; 'governments,' that is, governors, etc., in the same enumeration. The Americans, it is well known, by a similar idiom, call their servants 'helps.' Great difficulty attends the attempt to ascertain the nature of the office so designated among the first Christians. Many conjectures have been hazarded regarding it; but after all it must be confessed, with Doddridge, that 'we can only guess at the meaning of the words in question, having no principles on which to proceed in fixing it absolutely.'
The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.





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