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, and 8:46) we read that “virtue” went out of Christ. In each case, the Greek word for “virtue” is dynamis, which means “power.” “There went power out of him, and healed them all.” In all of these three places, the rendering “virtue” can be traced back to William Tyndale’s first New Testament of 1526, in which we read, at Luke 8:46, for example, “I perceive that vertue is gone out of me.” Outside of these three places, Tyndale rarely translated dynamis as “virtue,” 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 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: “Angels, Archangels, and 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 shall give to his voice the voice of virtue, give ye glory to God in Israel; his great doing and his virtue is in the clouds. God is wonderful in his saints; God of Israel, he shall give virtue and strength to his people.” “Voice of virtue” is “mighty voice” in our Bible, and in the other two instances where “virtue” appears here in Wycliffe’s Bible, the King James Version has “strength.”
Psalm 89:10: “In the arm of thy virtue thou hast scattered thine enemies.”
Psalm 147:5: “Our Lord is great, and his virtue is great.”
Isaiah 50:2: “Whether my hand is abridged, and made little, that I may not redeem? Or virtue is not in me to deliver?” “Abridged” is “shortened,” as our Bibles have it. “Virtue” here is “power.”
Matthew 22:29 (Early Version): “Ye err, neither knowing the scriptures, neither the virtue of God.”
Luke 4:36: “In power and virtue he commanded unclean spirits.”
Luke 21:26: “For virtues of heavens shall be moved” (“the powers of heaven shall be shaken”—KJV).
Acts 19:11: “And God did virtues not small by the hand of Paul.”
1 Thessalonians 1:5: “Our gospel was not at you in word only, but also in virtue.”
Revelation 13:2: “And the dragon gave his virtue and great power to him.”
In the last example, “virtue” is “power,” while “power” is “authority.” So in Luke 4:36, “power and virtue” is “authority and power.” In Acts 19:11 (and numerous other scriptures), “virtues” 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 whence hath he these things? and what wisdom is this that is given unto him? and such virtues that are wrought by his hands?” “Virtues” stood here in the English Bible until 1560, when the Geneva Bible altered it to “great works.” In 1568, the Bishops’ Bible altered it to “mighty works,” which was followed by the King James Version.