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Bible Dictionaries
Mirror
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (ἕσοπτρον, 1 Corinthians 13:12, James 1:23; the classical word was κάτοπτρον, whence κατοπτρίζεσθαι, in 2 Corinthians 3:18; Lat. speculum, late Lat. miratorium, from mirari, whence Fr. miroir)
The mirrors of the ancients consisted of a thin disk of metal-usually bronze, more rarely silver-slightly convex and polished on one side. Glass mirrors coated with tin, of which there was a manufactory at Sidon (Pliny, Historia Naturalis (Pliny) xxxvi. 66, 193), were little used, and the art of silvering glass was not discovered till the 13th century. Corinthian mirrors were considered the best, and it is interesting that St. Paul’s two figurative uses of the word occur in his letters to Corinth.
1. To bring home to the imagination the limitations of human knowledge, he says that in the present life we see only by means of a mirror darkly (διʼ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, 1 Corinthians 13:12). In a modern mirror the reflexion is perfect, but the finest burnished metal gave but an indistinct image. To see a friend in a mirror, and to look at his own face, was therefore to receive two different impressions. So this world of time and sense, as apprehended by the human mind, imperfectly mirrors the true and eternal world, leaving many things ‘enigmatic.’ Mediate knowledge can never be so sure and satisfying as immediate. Plato (Rep. vii. 514) in his well-known simile of the cave compares our sense-impressions to shadow-shapes that come and go, giving but hints of the real world beyond; and the figure of the mirror is found in such Platonists as the writer of Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon 7:26) and Philo (de Decal. 21). J. H. Newman directed that his memorial tablet at Edgbaston should bear the words-Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem. Many writers have supposed that St. Paul refers not to a mirror but to a semi-transparent window-pane: ‘velut per corneum specular obsoletior lux’ (Tertullian, de An. 53). But a window of talc would be δίοπτρον (Lat. speculare), not ἔσοπτρον. Tertullian has indeed the right interpretation in adv. Prax. 16, ‘in imagine et speculo et aenigmate.’
2. St. Paul says that we all, with unveiled face mirroring (κατοπτριζόμενοι) the glory of the Lord, are transfigured (cf. Mark 9:2) into the same image (2 Corinthians 3:18). While Moses, who saw God and for a little while outwardly reflected His glory, gradually lost the supernatural radiance, the disciples of Christ steadily beholding (cf. John 1:14) and reflecting His moral glory, become daily more like Him: ‘the rays of Divine glory penetrate their innermost being and fashion them anew’ (Bousset, Die Schriften des NT, 1908, ii. 179). The older interpretation-‘beholding as in a mirror’-loses the parallel between Moses’ direct vision of God and ours (by faith) of Christ, and fails to do justice to the ‘unveiled face.’
3. James (James 1:23-25) compares the law of liberty-a splendid paradox-to a mirror in which a man sees himself as he is. The mere hearer of the law is like a person who gives a hasty glance at his face in a mirror and then turns his attention to other things; but he who continues to look into the mirror of the law till the moral ideal fascinates him and the categorical imperatives win his passionate assent, so that his own will is more and more conformed to the will of God-that man shall learn the secret of true happiness.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Mirror'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/m/mirror.html. 1906-1918.
