Testament
From BibleEncyclopedia.Net
tes´ta-ment:
Occurs twelve times in the New Testament (Hebrews 9:15, etc.) as the rendering of the Greek διαθήκη (diatheke), which is twenty times rendered “covenant” in the King James Version, and always so in the Revised Version. The Vulgate translates incorrectly by testamentum, whence the names “Old” and “New Testament,” by which we now designate the two sections into which the Bible is divided.
The word διαθήκη, diathḗkē, almost invariably rendered “covenant,” was rendered in the King James Version “testament” in Hebrews 9:16, Hebrews 9:17, in the sense of a will to dispose of property after the maker's death. It is not easy to find justification for the retention of this translation in the Revised Version (British and American), “especially in a book which is so impregnated with the language of the Septuagint as the Epistle to the Hebrews” (Hatch).
