Greek for the guide who walks in front. It appears once in the Brit Chadashah, in the verse where Yeshua forbids it.
The full definition
Kathēgētēs is built from kata and hēgeomai, to lead the way down a road. The kathēgētēs walks in front; the direction he walks is the direction everyone behind him walks. In modern Greek the word means professor, which tells you where the road went.
In the whole of the Brit Chadashah the word appears in exactly one verse, Matthew 23:10, and the verse exists to refuse it: "Nor are you to be called leaders, for you have one guiding leader, who is also the Mashiach." A line has exactly one front. Yeshua's rule keeps that position permanently filled, by himself, so that no man can occupy it over his brothers. In his own Galilean Aramaic the word behind it was likely Dabbara, the driver of the flock. Whatever the original sound, the target is the same: not guidance itself, which is work anyone may do, but the standing office of the one necessary guide, which is a chair.
Key passages
- Matthew 23:10