Bible Lexicons

ἀπέκδυσις is admittedly a word first used by Paul, so far as our present knowledge goes : only one MS of Josephus (Antt. vi. 14.2) saves its verb from the same category. There can be little doubt that Lightfoot (on Colossians 2:15) rightly treats them both as minted by the Apostle. It was evidently for the special purpose in his mind when writing this letter; and if Nägeli (p. 50) asks why he should have coined a word not needed to express some specially Christian conception, the answer is surely that a new compound, formed by prefixing a perfectivizing preposition in an entirely normal way, was a resource available for and generally used by any real thinker writing Greek. What else are we to infer from the list of ἅπαξ εἰρημένα which any writer’s index verborum will afford, even if the majority were really only ἅπαξ εὑρημένα ? The case of ἀπεκδέχομαι (q.v.) may be taken with this; but there, if Paul coined the word, he used it again, which he did not with these. On the problem of Colossians 2:15 we have nothing to contribute that would be relevant in this work.