1 year, 10 months ago
Was Adolf Hitler aware of this?
The word "Ολοκαυτώματα" is Greek, and it is pronounced like this:
"Holo-causts"
To be fair it is not EXACTLY that, it it comes out "Howla-Cau-tolaza" if your Greek, but when you say it with an English speaking accent, it sounds a lot like Holocausts.
However this word did not originally mean holocaust as was we think of it, It means "Burnt Offerings" as in the biblical sense. Inevitably, the word is tied to German concentration camps in Greece today, but it was not always like this.
http://translate.google.com/#en|el|Burnt%20Offerings
http://translate.google.com/#en|el|Holocausts
In the 40's Hitler made this word out to have similar meaning to the word's "Mass Extinction" in German. With the word being much older that the Nazi regime, Do you think Hitler knew about this? Is it a bit of evil satire on his part, to say that the entire holocaust was a burnt offering? Did he ever explain this anywhere, did he himself view the holocaust as a "burnt offering"? Or did he just stumble upon those syllables and call it good?
Here is a Greek and English translation of the scripture:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ma7YAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA216&lpg=PA216&dq=%CE%9F%CE%BB%CE%BF%CE%BA%CE%B1%CF%85%CF%84%CF%8E%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%B1&source=bl&ots=-BE66RcKG-&sig=YfQU_J0WfXGgvMSoV7UJvEJWonE&hl=en&ei=OZw0TNb-MsL9nQfF9eWFBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%CE%9F%CE%BB%CE%BF%CE%BA%CE%B1%CF%85%CF%84%CF%8E%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%B1&f=false
"Holo-causts"
To be fair it is not EXACTLY that, it it comes out "Howla-Cau-tolaza" if your Greek, but when you say it with an English speaking accent, it sounds a lot like Holocausts.
However this word did not originally mean holocaust as was we think of it, It means "Burnt Offerings" as in the biblical sense. Inevitably, the word is tied to German concentration camps in Greece today, but it was not always like this.
http://translate.google.com/#en|el|Burnt%20Offerings
http://translate.google.com/#en|el|Holocausts
In the 40's Hitler made this word out to have similar meaning to the word's "Mass Extinction" in German. With the word being much older that the Nazi regime, Do you think Hitler knew about this? Is it a bit of evil satire on his part, to say that the entire holocaust was a burnt offering? Did he ever explain this anywhere, did he himself view the holocaust as a "burnt offering"? Or did he just stumble upon those syllables and call it good?
Here is a Greek and English translation of the scripture:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ma7YAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA216&lpg=PA216&dq=%CE%9F%CE%BB%CE%BF%CE%BA%CE%B1%CF%85%CF%84%CF%8E%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%B1&source=bl&ots=-BE66RcKG-&sig=YfQU_J0WfXGgvMSoV7UJvEJWonE&hl=en&ei=OZw0TNb-MsL9nQfF9eWFBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%CE%9F%CE%BB%CE%BF%CE%BA%CE%B1%CF%85%CF%84%CF%8E%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%B1&f=false
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M$2 Answers
I just would like to make note that you're missing a few syllables. "Ολοκαυτώματα" transliterates to "olokautomata" (possibly "olokautumata" or "olokautoumata," I'm not sure how ώ is transliterated). I believe the word you're looking for is "ὁλόκαυστος" (olokaustos). You are basically correct in the meaning, though. The word ὁλον (olon) is "whole/wholly" and καυστος (kaustos) is "burnt," therefore meaning "that which is burnt in entirety," and which does refer to Biblical fire sacrifices.
I found a great excerpt on Wikipedia:
"{The} Latin form (holocaustum) was first used with specific reference to a massacre of Jews by the chroniclers Roger of Howden and Richard of Devizes in the 1190s. For hundreds of years, the word holocaust was used in English to denote massive sacrifices and great slaughters or massacres. During World War II, the word was used to describe Nazi atrocities regardless of whether the victims were Jews or non-Jews. Since the 1960s, the term has come to be used by scholars and popular writers to refer exclusively to the genocide of Jews."
Therefore, "holocaust" has been in English vocabulary for quite some time, and though the meaning has changed from "sacrifice" to "massacre," there's always been some kind of religious connection.
Interestingly, from the German Wikipedia article on the Holocaust, the etymology is described as the same, but they also note:
"Der englische Begriff auch in der deutschen Sprache üblich, manchmal auch in der Schreibweise des selten verwendeten deutschen Fremdworts Holokaust. Der Begriff soll die historische Singularität dieses Verbrechens betonen." ("The English term was common in the German language, sometimes in the spelling of the rarely used German foreign word 'Holokaust.' The concept is to emphasize the historical singularity of this crime.")
So "Holokaust" was in use during this time in Germany as well, though I'm not sure if there is a way to know whether the general population then were aware of the religious undertones.
I found a great excerpt on Wikipedia:
"{The} Latin form (holocaustum) was first used with specific reference to a massacre of Jews by the chroniclers Roger of Howden and Richard of Devizes in the 1190s. For hundreds of years, the word holocaust was used in English to denote massive sacrifices and great slaughters or massacres. During World War II, the word was used to describe Nazi atrocities regardless of whether the victims were Jews or non-Jews. Since the 1960s, the term has come to be used by scholars and popular writers to refer exclusively to the genocide of Jews."
Therefore, "holocaust" has been in English vocabulary for quite some time, and though the meaning has changed from "sacrifice" to "massacre," there's always been some kind of religious connection.
Interestingly, from the German Wikipedia article on the Holocaust, the etymology is described as the same, but they also note:
"Der englische Begriff auch in der deutschen Sprache üblich, manchmal auch in der Schreibweise des selten verwendeten deutschen Fremdworts Holokaust. Der Begriff soll die historische Singularität dieses Verbrechens betonen." ("The English term was common in the German language, sometimes in the spelling of the rarely used German foreign word 'Holokaust.' The concept is to emphasize the historical singularity of this crime.")
So "Holokaust" was in use during this time in Germany as well, though I'm not sure if there is a way to know whether the general population then were aware of the religious undertones.
source(s):
Wikipedia: "Niewyk, Donald L. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." Also see "The Holocaust", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others, by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question"."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_(sacrifice)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
Wikipedia: "Niewyk, Donald L. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." Also see "The Holocaust", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others, by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question"."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_(sacrifice)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
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M$
I found this resource that states the root word is the Greek, "holokauston," which meant a sacrifice totally burned by fire. There are also examples of the word's use going back to the bible, right up to the extermination of the Jews:
http://www.berkeleyinternet.com/holocaust/
I'm not sure the Nazis would have used the word "holocaust" for what was happening to the Jews, since they did not believe it was a sacrifice. The extermination of the Jews was strictly the result of the economic policies of Heinrich Himmler, Hjalmar Schact and others of the Third Reich.
http://www.berkeleyinternet.com/holocaust/
I'm not sure the Nazis would have used the word "holocaust" for what was happening to the Jews, since they did not believe it was a sacrifice. The extermination of the Jews was strictly the result of the economic policies of Heinrich Himmler, Hjalmar Schact and others of the Third Reich.
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M$
Thank you so much @potterarchy! this is a fantastic answer, I feel twice as knowledgeable on the subject now. I can even tell people i know a little bit about the Greek language now!
Don't worry about the tangent story, everything you posted was very interesting to me.
very interesting, I never made the connection that in Germany they not only viewed the holocaust as something different than what others saw it as, but probably called it something different too.
So was calling it "The Holocaust" the rest of the worlds way of saying this is a "burnt offering" or something god does not want as a sacrifice?
I'm not sure what you meant by the missing syllables, i know nothing of the Greek language. I had read an article claiming that "burnt offerings" and "holocaust" were the same word in Greek. Then i found on the google translator that it turns out to be the exact same word as "Burnt Offerings" when you translate "Holocausts" instead of "Holocaust"
So is Ολοκαυτώματα an outdated word? because it is in the bible multiple times, is it kind of like "thou" and "shall" for us? In the sense that we know what they mean but we never use them. Or is it just an error in translation?
Well, glad to help. :)
This is just my theory, but it feels like the Holocaust - to the Nazis, anyway - was "for the greater good," ie sacrificing millions of human lives in order to preserve the way of life that they deemed superior. The concept behind "sacrifice" is that you're killing something you would otherwise try to protect, but you're killing it/them for a higher purpose.
As for your confusion about the syllables, sorry I didn't explain a little more. Greek letters are very similar to how we use our letters in English, and 99% of the time, you can just replace a Greek letter with its English equivalent and call it good. Only a few letters (like χ) get a little complicated. So if you take a look at oλοκαυτώματα and break it down letter by letter, you get o-l-o-k-a-u-t-o-m-a-t-a (I looked up ώ, it's transliterated as simply "o," so that settles that). So that's not exactly "holocausts" or "howlacautolaza," either. That's why I brought that up, just so you weren't confused - and it confused you more, sorry! :)
Ολοκαυτώματα isn't an out-dated word at all, in fact, that's the Modern Greek word for "Holocaust." (It can also be "oλοκαύτωμα" or "oοκαυτώματος" or probably a few different variations, due to their grammar structure.) The word that I suggested ("ὁλόκαυστος") is - I believe - the Ancient Greek word from which the word ultimately derives.
... let me know if that just confused you more.
According to the document you linked earlier, it looks like the Lord is speaking to Moses about what kind of offerings/sacrifices He requires. Even at this point, it's not necessarily an animal that must be burnt completely for a sacrifice - the text does not mention fire in any way, and in fact references specifically "seven lambs of a year old without blemish," so burnt animals are not what the Lord wanted. It seems that, by Bibilical times, "holocaust"/"oλοκαυτώματα" had already strayed away from its literal sense, and become a metaphor for a sacrifice/offering.
What this has to do with the Holocaust itself is a bit historical, and a bit linguistical. As previously mentioned, Wikipedia states "{The word's} Latin form (holocaustum) was first used with specific reference to a massacre of Jews ... in the 1190s. For hundreds of years, the word holocaust was used in English to denote massive sacrifices and great slaughters or massacres."
So while it may have started with a meaning of "offering" or "sacrifice" in the Bible, this meaning shifted to "massacre" during the years, culminating with Richard I's reign of England in the 1100s, and eventually World War II as well.
This kind of linguistic shift is actually pretty common. I read a book on the evolution of language ("The Unfolding of Language" by Guy Deutscher), and it detailed lots of words we use today that were originally more concrete concepts. Take the word "concept," for example. Right now it means "idea," right? It's abstract, you can't feel or touch a concept. However, the word is ultimately derived from the Latin verb "concipere," which is "to conceive," and that's slightly more tangible (you can't exactly touch "conceive," but "conceive" does involved some tangible... actions). So originally, "concept" came about because someone decided to use "conceive" in a more abstract manner. And "concipere" itself comes from the Latin word "capiō," meaning "to capture," and "capiō" from the Proto-Indo-European word base "kap," meaning "to take" or "to grasp." We all had rudimentary words when we first started using language (rock, me, go, take) and when we started using more creativity, we invented metaphors and made things more abstract ("go" can mean physically going somewhere, or "going" to do something - ie, the future tense).
A bit of a tangent, sorry, but I thought it was an interesting point to make. :)
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust#Etymology_and_use_of_the_term
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England#Anti-Jewish_violence
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concept
haha no that cleared i up, thanks!
So where does the bible come into all of this? is it just simply that the word for holocaust is the same for burnt offerings now?