After having demonstrated the USAGE of the word "apostacia" at http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/march2013/jovial312-2.htm, let me cover the etymology.

Some people overly optimistically have cooncluded that because "apostacia" basically means "falling away" , that perhaps a rapture can be a "falling away" of sorts. There are several problems with this attempt to redefine "apostacia" to mean "rapture", not the least of which is that the word is never used to mean "rapture" or "relocate" or anything similar.

The root STASIS

Here's one Greek dictionary definition of "STASIS";

"Standing, position, station, condition, rising, revolt, sedition, party-strife, discord, quarrel, party, faction" (Langenscheidt)

I doubt you'll find many unbiased sources that would tell you something different.  Notice that the root word basically means "apostacy" and adding "APO" to it doesn't really change the meaning much, except that the first few potential meanings drop out and "APOSTASIA" means simply apostacy.

The prefix APO can mean "away from", "from", "part of ", "after" and a few other things.  Adding "APO" to a word in Greek does not make a consistent change to its meaning.  Sometimes it makes no change to the meaning (for example, apografe means the same thing as grafe), sometimes it makes the meaning the opposite, sometimes it creates another hue, and often, it bears no connection to the meaning of the root word at all and forms a completely new word with a completely different meaning not connected to the root.  With so many possible results from the same combinations, essentially that means that USAGE must be consulted to determine what a word means once "APO" gets added as a prefix, because APO can mean multiple things and has no consistent change when used as a prefix.

COMPOUND WORDS AREN'T ALWAYS THE SUM OF THEIR PARTS (In both English and Greek)

There are plenty of English examples we can draw from to show that when we combine two words together, the resulting word may not be related to the two individual words it was built from.  This is true in English, and it is true in Greek.  Hebrew doesn't really have this problem (with perhaps a few exceptions) since usually all words are built from a 3 letter root system.

Here's some English examples;

• AFTERMATH is not something you do when you stop adding numbers.
• MOONSHINE is something you drink that doesn't come from the moon and doesn't shine.
• ENTITLE: enscribe means the act of "scribing" in English, but "TITLE" and "ENTITLE" are two different words.  ENTITLE does not mean to write the title down, but that someone is due or owed something.
• SPENDTHRIFT.  If you spend your money thrifty, you're a wise spender.  If you spend it un-thrifty, you're a "spendthrift".  It's stupid, but it's how English speakers use the word.
• BUTTERFLIES don't eat butter.
• CHEESECAKE has no cheese in it
• No one rides a CITIZENSHIP and no mother wears a MOTHERHOOD.
• SPEARMINT doesn't come from spears, and PEPPERMINT doesn't come from peppers.

Many compound words do not mean the sum of their parts.  The above are examples where at least one word of the two involved, sometimes both words, do not contribute to the meaning of the resultant word at all.

GREEK EXAMPLES INVOLVING APO + root

• Demos (dhmoV) = fat, but APODEMOS (apodhmoV) = to travel abroad
• Duo (dow) = sink, dive, but APODOU (apodow) = undress
• Thetos (qetoV) = adopt, but APOTHETOS (apoqetoV) = hidden
• ina (ina) = there, where, but APOINA (apoina) = ransom

I actually had an easier time finding Greek examples of this than I did English examples!  It seems Greek is worse about this type of thing than English is.

WITH COMPOUND WORDS, USAGE IS EVERYTHING

The only way to determine the meaning of a compound word is to examine how it is used.  Essentially, the usage of APOSTACIA in Greek is Apostacy, an English word derived from the Greek word in question.  We borrowed this word from the Greeks and didn't change the meaning, except that we narrowed the context of usage to something theological, whereas the Greeks used it in contexts broader than just theology.

We must fit our theology to the written text, not the text to our desired theology.

Shalom,

Joe