eispherō

εἰσφέρω is a transparent compound of εἰς and φέρω, attested from Homer onward (Od. 7.6) and irregular in its principal parts because φέρω is suppletive (future εἰσοίσω, aorist εἰσήνεγκα / εἰσήνεγκον, perfect εἰσενήνοχα). LSJ arranges the range under six heads: literal "carry in"; "bring in, contribute"; the Athenian technical sense "pay the property tax" (εἰσφορά); figurative "bring upon"; "introduce" a novelty or deity (Xenophon, Mem. 1.1.2, καινὰ δαιμόνια εἰσφέρων); and the political "propose" a motion or law (Herodotus 3.80; Thucydides 8.67; Demosthenes). Moulton and Milligan document the same senses through Roman-era papyri, including a close parallel to Luke 12:11 in P.Amh. II 77.22 (139 CE), where officials seize a man and carry him (εἰσήνεγκαν) into an administrator's counting-house. BDAG compresses the New Testament data into two heads, "to bring into an area, bring in" (Luke 5:18-19; Acts 17:20; 1 Tim 6:7; Heb 13:11) and "to cause someone to enter into a certain event or condition" (Matt 6:13 // Luke 11:4; Luke 12:11); Louw and Nida cross-list it under domain 15.165 (linear motion) and 13.14 (causing entry into an event or state); EDNT distinguishes literal carrying from the extensions to communication and to legal proceedings plus the debated causative use; TDNT treats it only briefly under the φέρω article (9:64). Spicq gives it no independent entry, a fair signal that it bears no theological weight of its own. The Septuagint narrows the classical range sharply: εἰσφέρω is the regular equivalent of Hebrew בּוֹא in the Hiphil (הֵבִיא) and occurs roughly eighty times, concentrated in the Pentateuch and above all in priestly contexts (Lev 4:5, 16; 10:18; Lev 16; Num 5:15; Exod 35-40; and of tithes deposited in the temple storerooms in 2 Chr 31, Ezra 8:30, Neh 10:35-39). The classical fiscal and political senses are entirely absent from the New Testament, which uses φόρος, κῆνσος, δίδραχμον, and τελέω for taxation. Hebrews 13:11 (ὧν εἰσφέρεται ζῴων τὸ αἷμα ... εἰς τὰ ἅγια) is accordingly read by Attridge, Ellingworth, Lane, and Koester as a generalizing paraphrase of the Levitical formula, especially Lev 16:27 LXX (εἰσηνέχθη), with the passive framing the action from the victim's side and the carried-in blood set against the bodies burned outside the camp. At Luke 5:18-19 Fitzmyer, Bovon, and Marshall read plain physical porterage, the present infinitive followed by the aorist subjunctive underscoring persistence; at Luke 12:11 Luke's εἰσφέρωσιν replaces Mark's ἄγωσιν and Matthew's παραδῶσιν, and the construction with ἐπί plus accusative is unusual, which is why Fitzmyer cites the Amherst papyrus and Nolland notes the movement from synagogue discipline to Gentile authorities. Acts 17:20 (ξενίζοντα ... εἰσφέρεις εἰς τὰς ἀκοὰς ἡμῶν) is the idiom "introduce, communicate," and Barrett and Keener both stress the Socratic echo of Xenophon's καινὰ δαιμόνια εἰσφέρων. At 1 Tim 6:7 the gnomic aorist pairs εἰσφέρω antithetically with ἐκφέρω; Marshall and Knight take Job 1:21 LXX and Eccl 5:14 as the primary background, Luke Timothy Johnson stresses the near-verbatim Greco-Roman parallel of Seneca, Ep. 102.25, and Towner reads the verse as the spine of the argument for contentment. On Matt 6:13 // Luke 11:4, εἰσενέγκῃς is an aorist active subjunctive with μή forming a prohibitive subjunctive addressed to God, and the wording is identical in both Gospels, without manuscript variation, and already echoed in Didache 8.2 and Polycarp, Phil. 7.2. Fitzmyer's 2003 Biblica article is the standard technical treatment: the LXX equivalence with the Hiphil of בּוֹא is a straightforward causative, and a translator rendering a genuinely permissive Semitic original would have used a periphrasis such as μὴ ἀφῇς ἡμᾶς εἰσελθεῖν, a judgment he grounds in the translation-technique studies of Jenni and Tov. Luz likewise documents the softening tradition from Tertullian (De Oratione 8, ne nos patiaris induci), Cyprian, and Ambrose onward while insisting that exegetes preserve the harshness of the Greek, and Davies and Allison, France, Nolland, Keener, Bovon, and Wallace concur. Against them, Jeremias posited an Aramaic Aphel with tolerative force and Carmignac assembled twenty-eight Hebrew examples of a negated Hiphil with permissive sense, including the evening prayer of b. Berakhot 60b (וְאַל תְּבִיאֵנוּ ... לִידֵי נִסָּיוֹן); Marshall is among the few major commentators sympathetic to that case. The substantive disagreement, however, concerns πειρασμός rather than the verb: whether it denotes ordinary moral testing (Deut 8:2 LXX; Sir 2:1; Jas 1:2, 12), the eschatological ordeal (Brown, Jeremias, Lohmeyer, Davies-Allison, Luz, Wright, following Rev 3:10 and Mark 14:38), or the testing of God in the Massah tradition (Gibson, who also argues from Moule that anarthrous πειρασμός nowhere clearly denotes the eschatological ordeal before 150 CE). The 2017-2020 revisions of the French and Italian liturgical texts, endorsed by Pope Francis, drew heavy criticism on lexical grounds while resting on a genuine patristic paraphrastic tradition traced by Higgins in JTS 46 (1945); the German and English-speaking bishops declined to change, and the Latin editio typica retains et ne nos inducas in tentationem.