The Greek noun (ἀφεδρών) is a term for "latrine". The word occurs twice in the New Testament ( and ) but was unknown in classical texts. The Latin Vulgate rendered the term .Vulgate 7:19 "quia non intrat in cor ejus, sed in ventrum vadit, et in secessum exit, purgans omnes escas?" Wycliffe avoided the reference to a privy with "and beneath it goeth out", while Martin Luther translated the word as ("natural course"),Markus 7:19 - Denn es gehet nicht in sein Herz, sondern in den Bauch und gehet aus durch den natürlichen Gang, der alle Speise ausfeget. 1545 though Tyndale's "and goeth out into the draught" is clearer. Perhaps due in part to Luther's "natural course", various 18th- and 19th-century scholars assumed that the word was a euphemism for the human bowel.Robley Dunglison, Medical lexicon: a dictionary of medical science 1855, page 88. However, in 1901 the discovery and publication of an inscription at Pergamon confirmed that the word does, as per , in fact mean "latrine".
The Mark 7:19 verse translates as "out into the aphedron, cleaning all meats" which makes no sense if the meat is still lodged in the lower intestine.James Hope Moulton and George Milligan The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament
Inscription The following is a transcription and translation of the relevant fragment of the Greek text known in Latin as Lex de astynomis Pergamenorum and in English as Law of the town clerks of Pergamon.G. Klaffenbach, Lex de astynomis Pergamenorum (1954).The nature and function of water, baths, bathing, and hygiene from ... - Page 252 Cynthia Kosso, Anne Scott - 2009 "Günther Klaffenbach, “Die Astynomeninschrift von Pergamon,” Abhandlungen der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Klasse für Sprachen, Literatur und Kunst 6 (1953), 3–25 took charge of providing a full, yet strictly philological, commentary. "
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