The words behind the New Testament

Greek had several words for love, and agapē was the least interesting of them. It was not the word for passion, and it was not the warm word for friendship. It was ordinary, and slightly colourless.

That is probably why the New Testament writers took it. A word without much history attached could be filled. They filled it with a love defined by what it does rather than what it feels — God so loved the world that he gave; love is patient, love is kind; greater love has no man than this.

The often-heard claim that agapē is “God's love” and phileō is “human love” is too tidy. The New Testament uses agapaō of people loving darkness rather than light, and of Demas, who loved this present world. The word carries the weight its sentence gives it.

• “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

  John 3:16→

• “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”

  1 Corinthians 13:4→

• “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

  1 John 4:8→

• “And this is the verdict: The Light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness rather than the Light because their deeds were evil.”

  John 3:19 — loved darkness→

• “because Demas, in his love of this world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia.”

  2 Timothy 4:10 — Demas loved this world→

Logos is much wider than “word.” It is a statement, a message, an account you give, a reason, the sense a thing makes. A shopkeeper's accounts are logoi; so is a speech; so is an argument.

By the first century it was also a technical term. Greek philosophy used it for the reason running through everything, and Philo — a Jewish thinker in Alexandria who died around AD 50 — used it for a divine intermediary between God and the world.

John opens his Gospel with it, and for thirteen verses a Greek reader could nod along. Then verse fourteen: the logos became flesh and pitched his tent among us. That sentence has no home in any of the philosophies. It is the point at which John stops borrowing.

• “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

  John 1:1→

• “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

  John 1:14→

• “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it pierces even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

  Hebrews 4:12→

Charis belongs to a family. Chara is joy; charisma is a gift freely given; eucharistia is thanksgiving. The root idea is a gift and the gladness on both ends of it.

In the everyday Greek world, charis described the favour a patron showed a client — real generosity, but inside a system where favours were expected to be returned.

Paul keeps the word and cuts the return. Grace, in his letters, is a gift that cannot be repaid and is not meant to be, which is exactly why he can set it against wages and against debt.

• “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God,”

  Ephesians 2:8→

• “Now the wages of the worker are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation.”

  Romans 4:4→

• “But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.”

  2 Corinthians 12:9→

Koinōnia comes from koinos, “common.” Two men who owned a fishing boat together were in koinōnia. It is a word about shared property before it is a word about shared feeling.

That is why the New Testament can use it of a cash collection for poor believers in Jerusalem without any change of register. Fellowship, in this vocabulary, includes the bank account.

So the English “fellowship,” which now suggests coffee after the service, is a considerable softening. The first church's koinōnia is described in Acts as holding things in common.

• “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

  Acts 2:42→

• “Because of the proof this ministry provides, the saints will glorify God for your obedient confession of the gospel of Christ, and for the generosity of your contribution to them and to all the others.”

  2 Corinthians 9:13→

• “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And this fellowship of ours is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.”

  1 John 1:3→

Parousia literally means “being present,” and Paul uses it that plainly — he apologises that his own parousia is unimpressive. But in the wider world it had a formal sense: the state visit of a sovereign.

Inscriptions and papyri from the Greek east use it exactly that way. A parousia was a public event, announced in advance, with the citizens turning out along the road.

That is the picture behind the New Testament's word for Christ's return, and it explains a phrase that otherwise sounds odd: believers are caught up “to meet the Lord in the air.” The word for that meeting, apantēsis, is the same one used for a delegation going out of the city to escort the arriving king back in.

• “By the word of the Lord, we declare to you that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep.”

  1 Thessalonians 4:15→

• “After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.”

  1 Thessalonians 4:17→

• “For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”

  Matthew 24:27→

• For some say, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but his physical presence is unimpressive, and his speaking is of no account.”

  2 Corinthians 10:10 — Paul's own unimpressive presence→

Eu is “good” and angelia is “message,” and the compound was in ordinary use for the kind of news a herald shouts. It was not a religious word.

It was, however, an imperial one. A famous inscription from Priene in Asia Minor, set up around 9 BC, calls the birthday of Augustus the beginning of good news for the world.

Mark opens his book with “the beginning of the euangelion of Jesus Christ,” and readers in the Roman east would have heard the form of the sentence before they heard its content. The word for the empire's announcements was pointed at somebody the empire had executed.

• “This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

  Mark 1:1→

• “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Greek.”

  Romans 1:16→

• “Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, and in which you stand firm.”

  1 Corinthians 15:1→

The word is built from ek, “out,” and a verb for calling — the citizens called out to meet. It named a political body, and Greek cities had used it that way for centuries.

Luke shows the ordinary sense without meaning to. During the riot at Ephesus he uses ekklēsia three times in one chapter of a pagan crowd and a lawful town meeting.

It is also the word the Greek Old Testament uses for the assembly of Israel. So when the New Testament calls Christians the ekklēsia, it is claiming two things at once: this is the assembly of God's people, and this is a body with standing.

• “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

  Matthew 16:18→

• “Meanwhile the assembly was in turmoil. Some were shouting one thing and some another, and most of them did not even know why they were there.”

  Acts 19:32 — a pagan mob→

• “He was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. And he received living words to pass on to us.”

  Acts 7:38 — the assembly in the wilderness→

One Greek word covers breath, wind and spirit, exactly as the Hebrew ruach does. That overlap is not a Bible invention; it is simply how both languages happened to work, and it made translating the Old Testament into Greek much easier at this point than at most others.

It also lets Jesus make a pun no English Bible can keep. In John 3:8 the word appears twice in one sentence — the wind blows where it wills, and so is everyone born of the Spirit. Same word, and the sentence turns on it.

The English word “pneumatic” comes from the same root, and it is a useful reminder: this is a word about moving air before it is a word about theology.

• The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

  John 3:8→

• “Suddenly a sound like a mighty rushing wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.”

  Acts 2:2→

• “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”

  Romans 8:16→

Meta means “after” or “change,” and nous is the mind. Metanoia is what happens when you think again and it changes what you do.

The English “repentance” comes through Latin and carries an overtone of sorrow that the Greek does not require. Regret may come with it; the word itself is about the turn.

The Hebrew background pushes the same way. The Old Testament's word, shuv, means to turn around and go back — a change of direction, physically pictured.

• “Produce fruit, then, in keeping with repentance.”

  Matthew 3:8→

• “Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

  Acts 2:38→

• “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”

  2 Corinthians 7:10→

In the New Testament martys is still mostly a courtroom word. The apostles are witnesses of the resurrection in the plain sense — they say what they saw.

But the cost of saying it kept rising, and you can watch the word begin to slide. Revelation calls Antipas “my faithful witness, who was slain”; Stephen is remembered as the first to die for the testimony.

Within a century or so, martys had become “martyr” in the sense English now uses. The change is not a mistranslation. It is a record of what happened to the people who kept testifying.

• But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

  Acts 1:8→

• “And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and watching over the garments of those who killed him.’”

  Acts 22:20→

• “I know where you live, where the throne of Satan sits. Yet you have held fast to My name and have not denied your faith in Me, even in the day when My faithful witness Antipas was killed among you, where Satan dwells.”

  Revelation 2:13→

The word is built from para, “alongside,” and a verb for calling. A paraklētos is someone you send for, who then comes and stands with you.

English translators have never agreed on it: Comforter, Counsellor, Advocate, Helper, and sometimes just Paraclete left untranslated. Each catches part of it and misses the rest.

It occurs five times, four of them in Jesus' last talk with the disciples, of the Spirit — and once in 1 John, of Jesus himself. So the New Testament calls two persons by this name, which is part of the point of the passage where Jesus promises “another” one.

• “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever—”

  John 14:16→

• “But I tell you the truth, it is for your benefit that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”

  John 16:7→

• “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate before the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.”

  1 John 2:1 — of Jesus→

This word is a foreigner in Greek. It came in from Semitic traders — the Hebrew ʿerabon is the pledge Judah leaves with Tamar in Genesis 38 — and Greek business kept it.

It is not a symbol or a token. An arrabōn is part of the actual payment, handed over first, of the same substance as the rest.

Paul uses it three times of the Holy Spirit, and the force is precise: what believers have now is not a picture of what is coming. It is the first instalment of it.

• “placed His seal on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a pledge of what is to come.”

  2 Corinthians 1:22→

• “And God has prepared us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a pledge of what is to come.”

  2 Corinthians 5:5→

• “who is the pledge of our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession, to the praise of His glory.”

  Ephesians 1:14→

• “I will send you a young goat from my flock,” Judah answered. But she replied, “Only if you leave me something as a pledge until you send it.”

  Genesis 38:17 — the pledge→

The word is blunt and the New Testament keeps it blunt. There is no euphemism anywhere: the thing is named for what it is.

Ancient sources describe the Roman apparatus in more than one configuration, and the Gospels give one detail that settles the usual picture — a titulus, the written charge, was fixed above his head, which requires an upright with a crossbeam.

Paul knew exactly how the word sounded to an audience. He calls his message “the word of the cross,” and immediately concedes it is foolishness to Greeks and a scandal to Jews.

• “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

  1 Corinthians 1:18→

• “Above His head they posted the written charge against Him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS.”

  Matthew 27:37 — the charge above his head→

• “But as for me, may I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

  Galatians 6:14→

Early Christians read the five letters of this word as five initials: Iēsous Christos Theou Yios Sōtēr — Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour. That reading is genuinely ancient, and the evidence for it has dates attached.

The fish is also simply everywhere in the Gospels, because half the disciples fished for a living. Jesus calls them to catch men; he feeds crowds with fish; he cooks fish on a beach after the resurrection.

What is attested and what is legend about the fish as a Christian sign is set out in the signs section further down this page, with the sources named.

• “Come, follow Me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.”

  Matthew 4:19→

• “So Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many, the net was not torn.”

  John 21:11→

• “So they gave Him a piece of broiled fish,”

  Luke 24:42→

The old translation “only begotten” reads the second half of the word as genn-, “beget.” The better reading takes it from gen-, “kind” — so: the only one of its kind, unique.

Hebrews settles the question by using it of Isaac, who was demonstrably not Abraham's only begotten son. Isaac was the only one of his kind: the son of the promise.

At John 1:18 the manuscripts differ — the oldest read “the only God,” a large body of later ones “the only Son.” This site does not hide that sort of thing; the manuscript wing has it.

• “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

  John 3:16→

• “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.”

  John 1:18→

• “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac on the altar. He who had received the promises was ready to offer his one and only son,”

  Hebrews 11:17 — Isaac→

Psychē covers the same ground as the Hebrew nephesh: the life in a creature, the person themselves, sometimes the appetite. English has no one word for it, so translators switch between “soul” and “life” — sometimes inside the same paragraph.

That switching is worth noticing rather than resenting. In Matthew 16 the same noun is rendered “life” twice and “soul” once in three verses.

Greek philosophy tended to set the soul against the body and prefer the soul. The Bible does not: its hope is resurrection, which is a claim about bodies.

• “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

  Matthew 16:25→

• “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”

  Matthew 16:26→

• “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your entire spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

  1 Thessalonians 5:23→