It was this illogicality which had prompted my suggestion that there may have been a semantic progression into its later autocracy denotation, from an earlier meaning, possibly used here, of “authority to kill”, but in this context, “permission to sacrifice.”

I will now attempt to support this proposition.

2) Questions of Lexicography

From the above, it seems to make little sense to describe being, to some degree, masters of themselves as limited authentia. A different word is needed to indicate a degree of limited self-determination or permission … such as “rights.” However, “rights” is an unlikely meaning since it should be noted that in the very next verse, “equal rights” is translated from isopolitas, not isoauthentias.

Exousia is usually translated as “authority,” so why employ another word here unless there is an intended nuance which modifies it? But authentia (if it meant “absolute authority” at that time) would surely intensify its meaning, not diminish it to have a connotation of “rights”?

Scholars have assumed a derivation of authentia from the cognates, auto (self) and hentes (worker) as aut(o)hentes, thus “authentic, original” – as an adjective. But there is an alternative derivation from auto and entea (arms, armour), auth(o)entea yielding the far more violent association, often recorded in texts.

I hold the belief that there has been much confusion in the translation of the authent– words from employing an unjustified bias towards the hentes cognate. This has been established by Thayer sponsoring the phrase “by one’s own hand” added in the text of Wisdom of Solomon 12:6 in the Duoay Rheims Bible, alone, as a poetic irony. It is found neither in the Greek, nor in any other early Bible. Yet, Thayer, Liddell and Scott all include this phrase, completely unjustified in their definitions of the authent– verb and nouns! Whenever the adjective authentikos is used, then the cognate hentes correctly yields “self-worked” (“authentic”). But for the verb, authenteo and two nouns, authentes and authentia, I believe the cognate entea should be used exclusively.