[prometheus76]

It's not a proverb, it's a scripture in the Bible. 1 Timothy 6:10 and you and OP are both right, depending on the translation at play.

NIV Bible: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil..."

KJV Bible: "For the love of money is the root of all evil..."

[eszed]

"Scripture" can be proverb. There's a whole bit of the Christian Bible helpfully labeled "Proverbs", is there not?

I was intrigued by the idea (elsewhere in the thread) that the root difference is translation from the vulgate vs translation from Greek, though I don't have the background to evaluate the claim. Regardless, absent really good reasoning I'll defer to the KJV, for reasons of historical importance and literary quality. So many phrases in the NIV (and other modern versions) set my teeth on edge.

[cess11]

Here's the greek: ῥίζα γὰρ πάντων τῶν κακῶν ἐστιν ἡ φιλαργυρία.

Crude translation almost word for word: 'root of all the evil is the greed'.

[eszed]

Thanks for that. It's been decades since I took Biblical Greek, but I still recognize a couple of words! I don't see the justification for the NIV's addition of "all kinds".

The translation process would have gone:

1) root of all evil is greed [eliminate non-English articles]

2) greed is root of all evil [swap to SVO syntax]

3) greed is the root of all evil [add required English article]

4) The love of money is the root of all evil ["translate" the vocabulary word into simpler terms]

There simply isn't any more faithful way to render that thought. You could stop at step three, but the KJV's genius lies in what a small vocabulary it uses. (I just checked: "greed" appears nowhere in the KJV, so the word was on the hit list.) The goal was to make the text understandable to the broadest audience possible - the vast majority of whom, at the time, were uneducated. That the translators were able to maintain that constraint while also creating something of incredible literary power is awe inspiring.

If you want to break it down a bit further, the phrasing in step three puts two stressed syllables ("greed is") together, which can be awkward, while the final version puts the verse into an iambic pattern (unstressed syllable preceding a stressed syllable), which rolls off the tongue much easier. The word "evil" then reverses that, which breaks the rhythm and calls attention to the end of the thought. (And, maybe, if you want to get especially literary or theological about it, provides a subtle commentary on the nature of evil.) It's so good.

[cess11]

It's a reference to Ecclesiastes (5:10) and Diogenes (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, VI.2 stanza 50), both probably well known by Timothy and the jews he was evangelising among. I'm not sure whether Diogenes used the word philargyria and can't be bothered to try and dig it up, but I think it's a rather literal translation of Ecclesiastes which has something like 'o-heb kesep', 'he who loves silver'.

Hebrew and aramaic doesn't have a word that directly translates to greed, but the meaning of philargyria is related to money rather than the metal and Ecclesiastes obviously describes 'love of silver' as a form of addiction and that's what Paul (or whoever actually wrote the epistle) had in mind when he wrote to Timothy and the jews he hung around with.

[eszed]

Thanks. I knew about the Old Testament reference, but not the Diogenes one. New Testament references to extra-scriptural texts are fascinating, and (in my experience, at least) mostly ignored in exegeses by biblical scholars within religious traditions.