There Went Virtue out of Him ” - Glenn Conjurske
“There Went Virtue out of Him”
Three times in the gospels (Mark 5:30, Luke 6:19 & 8:46) we read that “virtue” went out of Christ. In each case the Greek word for “virtue” is v , which means “power.” “There went power out of him, and healed them all.” In all of the three places the rendering “virtue” is to be traced back to William Tyndale’s first New Testament, of 1526, in which we read, at Luke 8:46 for example, “I perceave that vertue is gone out of me.” Outside of these three places Tyndale rarely so translates v , and yet in these places this rendering has stood untouched in all the subsequent revisions of the English Bible, up to the King James Version. Today the thought of virtue going out of one sounds strange to English ears, and most likely presents a wrong idea, but the translation is perfectly legitimate, for the original meaning of the word “virtue” is “power,” and especially divine or supernatural power. Richard Rolle (died 1349), in describing the nine (fictitious) orders of angels in the heavenly hierarchy, names as the lowest three, “Aungels, Archaungels, & Vertues”—-that is, “powers,” as in “principalities and powers” in the English Bible.
Rolle also used the word as we use it today, as in the following: “Als Criste dose noght his lufe in a foule hert in syn, & bownden in wile lust of flesche, bot in a hert êat es fayre and clene in vertues.” That is, “As Christ does not [put] his love in a foul heart in sin, and bound in vile lust of [the] flesh, but in a heart that is fair and clean in virtues.”
“Virtue” is commonly used for “power” in the Wycliffe Bible (often after the Latin virtus). There we read (in the Later Version),
Psalm 68:34-36, “Lo! he schal 3yue to his vois êe vois of vertu, 3yue 3e glorie to God on Israel; his greet doyng and his vertu is in êe cloudis. God is wondirful in hise seyntis; God of Israel, he schal 3yue vertu, and strengthe to his puple.” “Vois of vertu” is “mighty voice” in our Bible, and in the other two instances where “vertu” appears here in Wycliffe’s Bible, the King James Version has “strength.”
Psalm 89:10, “In êe arm of êi vertu êou hast scaterid thin enemyes.”
Psalm 147:5, “Oure Lord is greet, and his vertu is greet.”
Isaiah 50:2, “Whether myn hond is abreggid, and maad litil, that Y mai not a3enbie? ether vertu is not in me for to delyuere?” “A3enbie” is “again-buy,” that is, “buy back,” or “redeem.” “Abreggid” is “abridged,” or “shortened,” as our Bibles have it. “Virtue” of course is “power.”
Mathew 22:29 (Early Version), “3ee erren, neêer knowynge êe scripturis, neêer êe vertu of God.”
Luke 4:36, “in power and vertu he comaundiê to vnclene spiritis.”
Luke 21:26, “for vertues of heuenes schulen be mouyd” (“the powers of heaven shall be shaken”—-KJV).
Acts 19:11, “And God dide vertues not smale bi êe hoond of Poul.”
I Thes. 1:5, “oure gospel was not at 3ou in word oneli, but also in vertu.”
Rev. 13:2, “and êe dragoun 3af his vertu and greet power to hym.”
In this last example, “vertu” is power, while “power” is authority. So in Luke 4:36 “power and vertu” is “authority and power.” In Acts 19:ll (and numerous other scriptures) “vertues” is “miracles,” which is literally “powers” in the Greek, as well as the Latin, from which Wycliffe translated. Tyndale almost always uses “miracles” for this, but in Mark 6:2 he employs the word “virtues” for miracles. There he has (italicized letters are contracted in the original), “From whens hath he these thinges? and what wysdom is this that is geven vnto him? and suche vertues that are wrought by his hondes?” “Virtues” stood here in the English Bible until 1560, when the Geneva Bible altered it to “great workes.” In 1568 the Bishops’ Bible altered it to “myghtie workes,” which was followed by the King James Version.
Glenn Conjurske