dokimē

δοκιμή is a rare noun, effectively confined to Paul in early Greek (seven occurrences, all in the undisputed letters) and absent from the Septuagint, from the documentary papyri (Moulton and Milligan report none), and from classical prose apart from an interpolated line in Dioscorides; Moulton and Milligan judge it a fresh Hellenistic formation, and Dunn raises the possibility that Paul himself coined it from the well-attested adjective δόκιμος. If it is a new substantivization from that adjective, its semantic pressure is toward the state of being approved rather than the abstract act of testing, for which Greek already had δοκιμασία and δοκίμιον. Lexica agree on a threefold range: the process or ordeal of testing, the resultant state of proven genuineness, and the objective proof produced (BDAG; Thayer; Louw-Nida, which splits the term across three semantic domains; Spicq, TLNT 1:359-61; Grundmann, TDNT 2:255-60; NIDNTTE). The controlling image is the assaying and refining of precious metal, which Paul draws less from Attic commerce than from the Septuagint refiner texts, where God tests hearts as silver in the furnace (Ps 66:10; Prov 17:3; Mal 3:2-3, all using the cognate verb δοκιμάζω). On Romans 5:4 Cranfield (ICC 1:262-63) argues against rendering the noun character, since English character imports a modern notion of innate moral virtue; he glosses instead the quality of provedness left when the base metal has been refined away, and Dunn, Moo, Schreiner, Fitzmyer, Longenecker, Morris, Jewett, and Wright converge on the same resultative sense while differing over the English label. 2 Corinthians 8:2 is near-unanimously the process or ordeal sense, since the genitive of affliction defines the content of the testing, and 2 Corinthians 13:3 is unanimously the objective proof the Corinthians demand of Christ speaking in Paul. 2 Corinthians 9:13 remains the divided verse, read as proof produced, as ordeal passed, or as approved quality shown.