Helps
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament [1]
‘Help’ (ἀντίλημψις) is fairly common in the Septuagint, in the Psalms, and in 2 and 3 Maccabees. In Sirach 11:12; Sirach 51:7 we have persons who are in need of ἀντίλημψις. The plural ἀντιλήμψεις occurs in 1 Corinthians 12:28, coupled with ‘governments,’ and nowhere else in the NT. The verb from which it comes (ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι) is found in Luke 1:54 in a quotation from the Septuagint, where it is frequent; also in Acts 20:35 in a speech of St. Paul. The verb means ‘to take firm hold of’ some one in order to help ( 1 Timothy 6:2 is different); and by ‘helps’ or ‘helpings’ St. Paul probably moans the succouring of those in need, as poor, sick, and bereaved persons. Perhaps the helping of those in mental perplexity or spiritual distress, and all whom St. Paul calls ‘the weak,’ is also included. H. Cremer ( Bibl.-Theol. Lex. 3, 1880, p. 386) is mistaken in saying that this sense of ‘helping’ is ‘unknown in classical Greek’: it is frequent in papyri, in petitions to the Ptolemys (G. A. Deissmann, Bible Studies , Eng. translation, 1901, p. 92). The Greek commentators are also mistaken in interpreting ‘helpings’ as meaning deacons, and ‘governings’ as meaning elders; such definite official distinctions had not yet arisen. St. Paul is speaking of personal gifts. He is not speaking of select persons whom he or the congregation had appointed to any office; and neither he nor they can confer the gifts; that is the work of the Spirit. He exhorts the whole congregation to ‘continue to desire earnestly the greater gifts’; and individuals might receive more than one gift from the Spirit.
We have an instance of the gift of ‘helping’ in Stephanas and his household ( 1 Corinthians 16:15-18), and it is expressly stated that they ‘appointed themselves to minister to the saints.’ The Apostle did not nominate them to any office of ‘helper,’ nor did the congregation elect them to any such post. A person who believed that he possessed the gift tried to exercise it. If he was right in this belief, the people accepted his ministrations. There was no other appointment, and there was no class of officials into which he entered.
Literature.-F. J. A. Hort, The Christian Ecclesia , 1897, pp. 156-160; Robertson and Plummer, 1 Corinthians , 1911, pp. 280-284; H. A. A. Kennedy, Sources of NT Greek , 1895, p. 96; H. B. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the NT , 1909, p. 186f.; article‘Helps’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) and Hastings’ Single-vol. Dictionary of the Bible .
A. Plummer.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible [2]
Helps . Acts 27:17 ‘they used helps, undergirding the ships.’ The reference is to ‘cables passed round the hull of the ship, and tightly secured on deck, to prevent the timbers from starting, especially amidships, where in ancient vessels with one large mast the strain was very great. The technical English word is frapping , but the process has only been rarely employed since the early part of the century, owing to improvements in shipbuilding’ (Page’s Acts of the Apostles ; see Smith’s Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul , p. 105).
HELPS . In 1 Corinthians 12:28 St. Paul, in order to show the diversity in unity found in the Church as the body of Christ, gives a list of services performed by various members of the churchly body. In the course of his enumeration he uses two Gr. nouns ( antilçmpseis and kybernçseis ) employed nowhere else in the NT, and rendered in EV [Note: English Version.] ‘helps,’ ‘governments.’ ‘Helps’ may suggest a lowly kind of service, as of one who acts as assistant to a superior. The usage of the Gr. word, however, both in the LXX [Note: Septuagint.] and in the papyri, points to succour given to the needy by those who are stronger; and this is borne out for the NT when the same word in its verbal form occurs in St. Paul’s exhortation to the elders of the Ephesian Church to ‘help the weak’ ( Acts 20:35 RV [Note: Revised Version.] ). ‘Helps’ in this list of churchly gifts and services thus denotes such attentions to the poor and afflicted as were specially assigned at a later time to the office of the deacon; while ‘ governments ’ (RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ‘wise counsels’) suggests that rule and guidance which afterwards fell to presbyters or bishops.
We are not to think, however, that there is any reference in this passage to deacons and bishops as Church officials. The fact that ‘helps’ are named before ‘governments,’ and especially that abstract terms are used instead of concrete and personal ones as in the earlier part of the list, shows that it is functions, not offices, of which the Apostle is thinking throughout. The analogy of Acts 20:35 , moreover, where it is presbyters ( Acts 20:17 RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ) or bishops ( Acts 20:28 RV [Note: Revised Version.] ) that are exhorted to help the weak, is against the supposition that in an Ep. so early as 1 Cor. ‘helps’ and ‘governments’ corresponded to deacons and bishops. ‘Helps,’ as Hort says ( Chr. Ecclesia , p. 159), are ‘anything that could be done for poor or weak or outcast brethren, either by rich or powerful or influential brethren, or by the devotion of those who stood on no such eminence.’ ‘Governments,’ again, refers to ‘men who by wise counsels did for the community what the steersman or pilot does for the ship.’
J. C. Lambert.
Fausset's Bible Dictionary [3]
One class of ministrations in the early church, antileepsiees ( 1 Corinthians 12:28). A lower department, as "governments" are a higher; for instance, deacons who helped in relieving the poor, baptizing and preaching, subordinate to higher ministers ( Acts 6:1-10; Acts 8:5-17); others helped with their time and means in the Lord's cause ( 1 Corinthians 13:3; Numbers 11:17). Americans similarly use "helps" for "helpers." In Romans 12:8 "he that giveth" answers to "helps," "he that ruleth" to "governments," as bishops or presbyters ( 1 Timothy 5:17; Hebrews 13:17; Hebrews 13:24).
Easton's Bible Dictionary [4]
1 Corinthians 12:28
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblial Literature [5]
In the New Testament it occurs once, viz. in the enumeration of the several orders or classes of persons possessing miraculous gifts among the primitive Christians , where it seems to be used by metonymy, the abstract for the concrete, and to mean helpers; like the words 'miracles,' i.e. workers of miracles; 'governments,' that is, governors, etc., in the same enumeration. The Americans, it is well known, by a similar idiom, call their servants 'helps.' Great difficulty attends the attempt to ascertain the nature of the office so designated among the first Christians. Many conjectures have been hazarded regarding it; but after all it must be confessed, with Doddridge, that 'we can only guess at the meaning of the words in question, having no principles on which to proceed in fixing it absolutely.'
