In pre-biblical Greek σπλάγχνα denoted the noble upper viscera (heart, lungs, liver, kidneys), the organs eaten at sacrifice and inspected for omens (LSJ; Aristotle, De partibus animalium). Metaphorically classical Greek used the term for the seat of fierce emotions such as anger, anxiety, and desire, but not for tender mercy. The dominant account of the compassion sense is Helmut Köster's TDNT article (vol. 7, 1971), which argues that "have compassion" was effectively a new Greek rendering of the Hebrew רַחֲמִים / רָחוּם coined within Hellenistic Judaism. Ceslas Spicq (TLNT) and Françoise Mirguet ("Compassion in the Making," CHS 2013) modify this, noting a pre-Christian pagan papyrus (BGU IV.1139) and a Chrysippus fragment that show the semantic potential already latent in Koine, so the biblical usage is best read as a Judeo-Hellenistic crystallization rather than a pure coinage. The Septuagint proper does not carry the load (σπλάγχνα renders רַחֲמִים only at Prov 12:10; οἰκτιρμοί and ἔλεος are the usual equivalents); the decisive bridge is intertestamental literature, especially the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (the σπλάγχνα ἐλέους formula) and 4 Maccabees, though Marinus de Jonge's view that the Testaments are a later Christian composition raises a circularity caution. The Hebrew engine is the root ר-ח-ם, womb-love become divine mercy (Phyllis Trible; H. Simian-Yofre, TDOT), alongside מֵעִים as a wider organ-term for the seat of feeling. The single literal New Testament occurrence, Acts 1:18 (Judas), belongs to a Jewish-Hellenistic subgenre of the villain's graphic bowel-death (compare 2 Macc 9; 4 Macc 5).