haplous

The etymology and core sense of ἁπλοῦς are uncontested: contracted from ἁπλόος (copulative ἁ- plus the root for "fold"), it is "one-fold," the exact opposite of διπλοῦς "twofold," with a metaphorical extension to "undivided, sincere, without guile" already present in classical Greek. The "generous, liberal" sense is not classical but a Hellenistic-Jewish development: the Septuagint deployed the noun ἁπλότης to render the Hebrew vocabulary of wholehearted devotion (תֹּם, יֹשֶׁר), decisively at 1 Chronicles 29:17 (ἐν ἁπλότητι καρδίας, David's willing, lavish temple offering), and the Testament of Issachar makes the single heart issue paradigmatically in almsgiving (T. Iss. 3:8). The adjective occurs in the New Testament only in the eye-saying of Matthew 6:22 and Luke 11:34, where its antonym πονηρός evokes the Semitic idiom of the עַיִן רָעָה ("evil eye," stingy or envious) against the עַיִן טוֹבָה ("good eye," generous). Three readings are debated. Cadbury ("The Single Eye," HTR 47 [1954]) and Bauernfeind (TDNT 1:386-387) hold that the lexically secured sense is "single, sincere." The modern translation tradition, following BDAG and R. T. France (Matthew, NICNT), renders "healthy/sound," appealing to medical usage and the diseased-eye antonym. John H. Elliott ("The Evil Eye and the Sermon on the Mount," Biblical Interpretation 2 [1994]) reads the good-eye idiom for generosity as primary, while conceding the adjective does not signify generosity in and of itself. The dominant current position, held by France, Davies-Allison (ICC Matthew), Luz, and Keener, is a deliberate double-entendre exploiting all three fields at once. Susan R. Garrett (JBL 110 [1991]) argues that Luke, having relocated the saying away from any possessions context, intends single-minded commitment to Jesus rather than stewardship. Spicq (TLNT), Amstutz, and Thrall stress that the modern binary between "sincerity" and "generosity" was foreign to the writers, who inherited a term stretched to name one Hebraic virtue with two faces.