Features

You don’t have to spend 100s of dollars on fancy Bible software and download gigabytes of data just to look up a Greek word any more. Just visit the online lexicon app and start typing the word. No Greek keyboard? No worries! You can type Latin letters and immediately see results that match what you’ve typed so far. What if you only know the Strong’s number and don’t know any Greek at all? Step right up, we’ve got you covered! Just type in the Strong’s number (no prefix needed) and you’ll be all set in less than a second.

Just looking for a quick gloss of the word? Look for the entries in bold. Or keep reading the whole entry to get a better sense for how the word is used in different contexts (highly recommended). Entries in a lighter grey type give additional information about the etymology of the word, or synonyms.

Want to see where that word is used in the New Testament? Just scroll down and click on the Strong’s number to be taken to a page where every verse is listed!

Coming soon: all the verse references in the lexicon will be hyperlinked so you can immediately see how the word is used in context in the Greek New Testament.

Credits

Most of the credit goes to the fine folks behind the translatable-exegetical-tools/Abbott-Smith project. They invested a LOT of time and effort into digitizing the printed copy of Abbott-Smith’s lexicon and marking it up in a way that’s easy for computers to parse. This little lexicon app would never have existed without their labors. Credit is also due to Jeffrey N. who took my feeble initial efforts in Javascript and improved them nearly beyond recognition!

Are you missing a feature? This project is freely licensed, so you can make a copy and add your own changes! Or you can report a bug or request a feature to be added. Details are on GitHub: https://github.com/mrgreekgeek/abbott-smith-greek-lexicon-online

These are all free to share; no attribution required. As far as I can recall, the photos are all from Pixabay (or a similar free image site), and the Greek text is from the Byzantine GNT, which is licensed as public domain. Enjoy!

(Click to open large/download)

Another “original Greek” artifact includes an interesting piece of pottery with the creed written on it (Accession number: 69.74.312, Israel Museum, Jerusalem). And then there’s P. Oxy. 1784, which may even be earlier than P6! Read all about it in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Part XV by Grenfell and Hunt, page 17. You can check out an image of the papyrus P. Oxy. 1784 at the Atla Digital Library.

But I was unable to track down any complete copies of the Creed in ancient documents, so I decided I’d have to make my own!

First I had to locate a suitable blank piece of parchment, which I finally found at the British Library. Then I had to find a complementary font from my page of free Greek fonts. Next I took the digital text of the Nicene creed, removed all modern punctuation, spaces and diacritic markings, and arranged it on the parchment. I tried to match the line length and line spacing of the codex from the British Library as closely as possible to make it look realistic. Of course I needed to add some special effects to make the ink fade a little in places so it looked like it had been written several hundred years ago. Finally, I set it on a nice wooden table top!

It’s definitely not going to fool any paleographers, but I think it’s pretty cool, if I do say so myself!

Sources:

• Unicode text of the Nicene Creed – Σύμβολο της Πίστεως
• Blank parchment page – Royal MS 1 D VIII folio 1
• Free Greek uncial font – 0512 Dioskorides from KPS fonts
• Wooden texture – Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Since the resulting image was created with free resources, I am making it available for free as well. Feel free to use, share and copy it freely without any restrictions from me!

Byzantine Texts

• Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform, Public Domain. (PDF)
• Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform (Readers Edition), Public Domain.
• Family 35 (Pickering), CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (plain text).
• Solid Rock GNT, Public Domain.
• Text Critical GNT, Public Domain/CC BY 4.0. (PDF)
• Antoniades’ 1904 Patriarchal edition, Public Domain.

Textus Receptus

• KJV Textus Receptus (from CNTR), CC BY 4.0.
• Stephanus 1550, (from CNTR), CC BY 4.0. [removes movable nu]
• Stephanus 1550, (from Maurice Robinson), public domain.

Critical Texts

• Tischendorf, 8th Ed., Public Domain.
• Tregelles, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
• Statistical Restoration GNT, CC BY 4.0.
• SBL GNT, (from Logos) CC BY 4.0.
• Unfolding Word GNT, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Westcott & Hort, CC BY-SA.
• Nestle 1904, Public Domain. (See also)
• Berean Greek Bible, custom license.

More Free Resources

If you’d like to dig further, check out these lists of more free original language resources:

• Awesome Bible Data
• Biblical Humanities
• Greek Bibles at ebible.org

… so simple a task as translating a sentence from an ancient language into our own requires some sense of the social matrices of both the original utterance and ourselves. When we take up the dictionary and grammar to aid us, we err unless we understand that they only catalog the relics of language as a fluid, functioning social medium. If we translate without that awareness, we are only moving bones from one coffin to another.

—Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, Second Edition (Yale University Press, 2003), 5. (found here)

It  is difficult in following lines laid down by others not sometimes to diverge from them, and it is hard to preserve in a translation the charm of expressions which in another language are most felicitous. Each particular word conveys a meaning of its own, and possibly I have no equivalent by which to render it, and if I make a circuit to reach my goal, I have to go many miles to cover a short distance. To these difficulties must be added the windings of hyperbata, differences in the use of cases, divergencies of metaphor; and last of all the peculiar and if I may so call it, inbred character of the language. If I render word for word, the result will sound uncouth, and if compelled by necessity I alter anything in the order or wording, I shall seem to have departed from the function of a translator

—Jerome, “To Pammachius on the Best Method of Translating“.

The essential strangeness of the Gospel must never be forgotten. When it comes for the first time to a people, it opens up to them a whole new world, and introduces them to concepts which are wholly new and for which no suitable expressions exist in the language which they use. If we tailor our translations too smoothly to existing idiom, we may succeed in hiding what ought not to be hidden. I remember once exploding angrily in the Tamil Bible translation committee, when we had so smoothed out the complex passage Galatians 2: 1-10 as to conceal completely the tensions and confusions which underlie the apostle’s twisted grammar. This we had no right to do.

—Stephen Neill, “Translating the Word of God” p. 287, quoted in The Challenge of Bible Translation p. 102.

Dynamic equivalent proponents overwhelmingly assert that the difficulties posed by the original biblical text are either unique to modern readers or especially acute for them. Prefaces regularly use such formulas as “to modern readers” (NCV), “by the contemporary reader” (NLT), and “most readers today” (NJV). The effect is to isolate modern readers as a “special needs” group, and the whole dynamic equivalent enterprise can be viewed as an attempt to meet the special needs of impaired modern readers.

—Leland Ryken https://bible-researcher.blogspot.com/2011/09/leland-ryken-on-bible-readers.html

For language is a fluid thing. It does not remain fixed for a day. There is therefore constant need of retranslation and revision, lest the Word of God be left in archaic and outworn form.

—Herbert L. Willett, Our Bible: Its Origin, Character, and Value (Chicago: The Christian Century Press, 1917), p. 96.

For these reasons and others, with common charity to save all men in our realm, which God will have saved, a simple creature has translated the bible out of Latin into English. First, this simple creature had much labor, with diverse fellows and helpers, to gather many old bibles, and other doctors, and common glosses, and to make one Latin bible very true; and then to study it anew, the text with the gloss, and other doctors, as he might get, and especially Lyra on the old testament, that helped very much in this work; the third time to council with old grammarians, and old diviners, of hard words, and hard sentences, how they might best be understood and translated; the 4th time to translate as clearly as he could to the sentence, and to have many good and knowledgeable fellows at the correcting of the translation. First it is to know, that the best translating is out of Latin into English, to translate after the sentence, and not only after the words, so that the sentence is as open, or opener, in English as in Latin, and don’t go far from the letter; and if the letter may not be followed in the translating, let the sentence always be whole and open, for the words ought to serve to the intent and sentence, or else the words are superfluous or false.

—John Purvey (preface to the revised Wycliffe Bible)

Translation is the best of literary exercises, perhaps the only serious one. It is strictly impossible, and the scope for the apprentice’s ingenuity is therefore unlimited. At the same time the translator can have before him a competent model, not to copy but to study and to make something of his own out of.

—C. H. Sisson, On the Lookout (Manchester: Carcanet, 1989), quoted in Cecil Hargreaves, A Translator’s Freedom: Modern English Bibles and their Language.

Featured image is from the beginning of Luke’s Gospel in Erasmus’s 1522 Greek/Latin edition of the New Testament.

Enter my good friend Jeffrey. I casually mentioned my dilemma to him, and pretty soon he whips out his phone and starts writing a Python script that would search the list of Greek headwords that I found in my research for my previous post! Within an hour or so, he had figured out the code to return the results I wanted, and had handed over to me a list of not just one word, but 28 Greek words that used every single vowel in them!

Now most of these will be obscure words that you’ve never heard of, but hopefully there will be a few that sound familiar! So without further ado…

• ἀναδημιουργέω
• ἀνευρησιλογήτως
• ἀντιδημιουργέω
• ἀντιρρητορεύω
• ἀνυποσημείωτος
• ἀρχαιομελῐσῑδωνοφρῡνῐχήρᾰτος
• αὐλωνοειδής
• Βρῡσωνοθρᾰσῠμᾰχεῐοληψικέρμᾰτος
• γυναικοπρεπώδης
• διαμνημονεύω
• δυωκαιεικοσίπηχυς
• εἰρηνοφυλακέω
• ἐλαιωνηφρουρέω
• ἐναποθησαυρίζω
• εὐδιαχώρητος
• εὐκοινωνησία
• ἡλιοκαυτέω
• ηὐτοματισμένως
• θηροζυγοκαμψιμέτωπος
• θησαυροποιέω
• κηλωνεύομαι
• μελῐσῐδωνοφρῡνῐχήρᾰτα μέλη
• ὀκτωκαιδεκᾰ́πηχυς
• πηδᾰλιουχέω
• σῑτοκᾰπηλεύω
• στωμῠλιοσυλλεκτάδης
• συνδιαμνημονεύω
• σωληνεύομαι

There are a few interesting ones here that should be easy enough to understand. Take διαμνημονεύω for instance. If you remember what μνημονεύω means, then you’re not too far off from knowing what διαμνημονεύω means! (See also συνδιαμνημονεύω).

There are some mouthfuls in there too! Some of those are so long they should be outlawed from all lexica past and present. You can look up any of these words at LSJ online.

But unfortunately, I don’t think any of those words show up in the Greek Bible. So I decided to just search the Greek LXX and NT to see if I could find any that might be a little more familiar to a Bible student who knows Greek. After some wrangling of Jeffrey’s code (and with some helpful advice from him), I managed to run the script on both the Greek New Testament and the LXX!

Words in the Greek New Testament that use every vowel

• εὐοδωθήσομαι
• εὐπροσωπῆσαι
• συγκοινωνήσαντές
• ἀπηλλοτριωμένους

Words in the Greek Old Testament (LXX) that use every vowel

• κατηργυρωμένοι
• εὐοδωθήσεται (9x!)
• ᾐχμαλωτευμένοι
• κατευοδωθήσεται
• ἐξουδενωθήσονται
• εὐοδωθήσονται
• αἰχμαλωτευομένη
• ἱεροσυλημάτων

I was surprised to see that there was actually a word (εὐοδωθήσεται) that occurred 9 times! The same word appears in the GNT in a different form too (εὐοδωθήσομαι).

According to the data here, it took the good Greeks at least 10 letters (ἡλιοκαυτέω) to create the shortest Greek word that contains all 7 vowels. Technically that ε doesn’t count though, because that’s just the lexical form; you would never actually see the word written in a sentence with the ε. So the real shortest word is actually 11 letters, and there are four three of them (not counting πηδᾰλιουχέω because it also has a ghost ε):

1. αὐλωνοειδής
2. κηλωνεύομαι
3. σωληνεύομαι

But… this is a very limited corpus! Only a list of headwords and the text of the Greek OT and NT were used to find these 39 unique words. There must be hundreds of thousands more words out there (in all the different cases and verb conjugations) that may possibly yield a shorter word yet. Hmm… maybe I need to search a bigger ancient Greek corpus.

Well anyway, there you have it. Next time you’re teaching the alphabet to your beginner Greek students you can impress them by showing them a word that has every single one of the Greek vowels in it!

Now to come up with some good uses for all this data…

Header image adapted from this image by Alex Barcley from Pixabay

I’ve been wanting to make some Mr. Greek Geek video content for a while now, and I thought that this would be a good way to start out. I’m inviting you to join with me in memorizing Matthew 28:1-10 by watching and listening to the following video as a way to start out with familiarizing yourself with the text.

I started out with a slow recording for those who may not be very familiar with the text, and then read it again at a normal (for me) reading rate. Finally, just for fun, I added a page from Codex Sinaiticus so that you can read an ancient version of the text while you listen!

Enjoy!

Anyway, as I was reading along, I came to Chapter 16 of Mark, and noticed a rather unique insertion into the text at the end of Mark 16:8 (framed in red below).

Clearly that’s not part of the original text, so what is it? Just in case you’re having trouble reading Greek in ALL CAPS, here’s a regular version:

ἔν τισι μὲν τῶν ἀντιγράφων, ἕως ὧδε πληροῦται ὁ εὐαγγελιστής∙ ἕως οὗ καὶ Εὐσέβιος ὁ Παμφίλου ἐκανόνισεν· ἐν πολλοῖς δὲ καὶ ταῦτα φέρεται.

In some of the copies, the evangelist finishes here, up to which (point) also Eusebius of Pamphilus made canon sections. But in many the following is also contained.

(English translation from the THGNT’s apparatus)

It looks like a scribal note about the ending of Mark which the THGNT editors decided to include in their edition of the Greek NT as an explanation (or preface) to the longer ending! If we look down in the THGNT apparatus for Mark 16:8, we find an explanation of the source: “note as found in minuscule 1“.

Well, that piqued my interest, so I did a little online sleuthing, and found some digital images of miniscule 1 (GA #30001). There’s the note, right at the top of the page! (I added a blue box around it for clarity).

Fascinating stuff! I love any excuse to look at old biblical manuscripts.

I would dearly love to have heard the discussions that the THGNT committee had about this passage, and what it was that eventually sold them on the idea to include a scribal note from a 12th century manuscript!

Whatever the case, I rather like the idea of using an ancient explanatory note found in a biblical manuscript, rather than the terse heading: “THE LONGER ENDING OF MARK” that you’ll find in the UBS4:

Or the even more cryptic markings in the apparatus of the NA27.

Some of the THGNT’s other claims to fame include some rather unique ancient spellings (“γεινώσκετε” anyone?), and its preservation of the ancient method for paragraphing (outdenting the first line instead of indenting, see the first image in this post). But I think my favorite “quirk” of the THGNT is that neat little note from the scribe of miniscule 1!

Resources on Mark 16:9-20

Here are some relevant resources on the “longer ending” of Mark that I’ve come across. Thanks to those who commented below with links to additional resources!

• Samuel Tregelles on Mark 16:9-20 from An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament, pg. 246-261. (Read a text version with commentary here. As Matthew pointed out in the comments, the THGNT is based on Tregelles’ Greek NT).
• E. W. Bullinger’s The Companion Bible – Appendix 168: “The Last Twelve Verses of Mark’s Gospel” (Read a text version here.)
• MARK16 – A virtual research environment for the last chapter of Mark, including:
  • Manuscript evidence (with digital images of the manuscripts)
  • Open Access Publications (a long list of research articles and chapters from books)
  • Open Access Multimedia (video and audio)
• James Snapp Jr’s page: “Resources For the Study of Mark 16:9-20“.

Merriam Webster’s defines “idiom” this way: “an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (such as up in the air for “undecided”) or in its grammatically atypical use of words (such as give way).”¹ That’s a dictionary definition for you. I like this one better: “idioms are sentences that sound ridiculous to everyone but the native speakers who use them.“²

It should be no surprise that the Greeks had their own idioms. A few of them even show up in the Greek New Testament! This post is a little excursion into some of the less obvious idioms that often get “translated away” by English translations, because they wouldn’t communicate the same thing in English.

As an amateur Greek student, I have spent enough time with the Greek language in speaking, hearing, and reading it that I can tell when I see many of these that “this one isn’t necessarily meant to be taken ‘literally'”. What I don’t know, however, is how many of these idioms may in fact be Hebrew idioms that were translated into Greek, and understood by the original readers simply because they knew the Hebrew language and culture. I have attempted to sort out some of the more obvious Hebrew idioms into a separate section below.

As often happens, this post was inspired by reading someone else’s post. In this case, I was reading a post from The Ezra Project, which got my wheels to turning. But, enough of the introductions! Let’s cut right to the chase, and look at some of the most interesting Greek (and Hebrew) idioms in the New Testament!

Interesting Greek Idioms in the New Testament

Ἐκύκλωσαν οὖν αὐτὸν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι, καὶ ἔλεγον αὐτῷ, Ἕως πότε τὴν ψυχὴν ἡμῶν αἴρεις; Εἰ σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστός, εἰπὲ ἡμῖν παρρησίᾳ.

John 10:24

Here’s the NET Bible note (tn #62) for John 10:24:
“How long will you take away our life?” (an idiom which meant to keep one from coming to a conclusion about something). The use of the phrase τὴν ψυχὴν ἡμῶν αἴρεις (tēn psuchēn hēmōn aireis) meaning “to keep in suspense” is not well attested, although it certainly fits the context here. In modern Greek the phrase means “to annoy, bother.”

ἐλπίζω δὲ εὐθέως ἰδεῖν σε, καὶ στόμα πρὸς στόμα λαλήσομεν.

3 John 14

Here’s the NET Bible note (tn #30) for 3 John 14:
Grk “speak mouth to mouth,” an idiom for which the contemporary English equivalent is “speak face-to-face.”

Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ ἡ γέννησις οὕτως ἦν. Μνηστευθείσης γὰρ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ Μαρίας τῷ Ἰωσήφ, πρὶν ἢ συνελθεῖν αὐτούς, εὑρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου.

Matthew. 1:18

Louw & Nida 23.50 makes a brief comment about this, “ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχω (an idiom, literally ‘to have in the womb’): to be in a state of pregnancy — ‘pregnant, to be pregnant.’”

Θέσθε ὑμεῖς εἰς τὰ ὦτα ὑμῶν τοὺς λόγους τούτους· ὁ γὰρ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου μέλλει παραδίδοσθαι εἰς χεῖρας ἀνθρώπων.

Luke 9:44

Here’s the NET Bible note (tn #155) for Luke 9:44:
Grk “Place these words into your ears,” an idiom. The meaning is either “do not forget these words” (L&N 29.5) or “Listen carefully to these words” (L&N 24.64). See also Exod 17:14…

Καὶ ἐλθὼν εὑρίσκει αὐτοὺς πάλιν καθεύδοντας, ἦσαν γὰρ αὐτῶν οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ βεβαρημένοι.

Matthew 26:43

Louw & Nida 23.69 explains: “(idioms, literally ‘their eyes were weighed down’) to become excessively or exceedingly sleepy — ‘to have become very sleepy, to be very sleepy.’” [cf. Mark 14:40]

καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Μὴ δύνανται οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ νυμφῶνος πενθεῖν, ἐφ’ ὅσον μετ’ αὐτῶν ἐστιν ὁ νυμφίος;

Matthew 9:15

Louw & Nida 11.7 gives this succinct explanation: “υἱοὶ τοῦ νυμφῶνος (an idiom, literally: sons of the wedding hall) guests at a wedding, or more specifically, friends of the bridegroom participating in wedding festivities — wedding guests or friends of the bridegroom — A literal rendering of the idiom ‘sons of the wedding hall’ has often been seriously misunderstood, for example, the bride’s children born prior to the marriage. (Matt 9:15; Mark 2:19; Luke 5:34)” See also Carl Hagensick’s article in The Herald Magazine.

Hebrew Idioms in the Greek New Testament

Λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί, γύναι; Οὔπω ἥκει ἡ ὥρα μου.³

John 2:4

Here’s the NET Bible note (tn #8) for John 2:4
Grk “Woman, what to me and to you?” (an idiom). The phrase τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί, γύναι is Semitic in origin. The equivalent Hebrew expression in the Old Testament had two basic meanings:
(1) When one person was unjustly bothering another, the injured party could say “What to me and to you?” meaning, “What have I done to you that you should do this to me?” (Judg 11:12, 2 Chr 35:21, 1 Kgs 17:18).
(2) When someone was asked to get involved in a matter he felt was no business of his, he could say to the one asking him, “What to me and to you?” meaning, “That is your business, how am I involved?” (2 Kgs 3:13, Hos 14:8).
Option (1) implies hostility, while option (2) implies merely disengagement. Mere disengagement is almost certainly to be understood here as better fitting the context (although some of the Greek Fathers took the remark as a rebuke to Mary, such a rebuke is unlikely).

Καὶ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτούς, Ἐπιθυμίᾳ ἐπεθύμησα τοῦτο τὸ Πάσχα φαγεῖν μεθ’ ὑμῶν πρὸ τοῦ με παθεῖν·

Luke 22:15

In Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers we find this explanation: “with desire I have desired.—The peculiar mode of expressing intensity by the use of a cognate noun with the verb of action, though found sometimes in other languages, is an idiom characteristically Hebrew (comp. “thou shalt surely die” for “dying thou shalt die,” in Genesis 2:17), and its use here suggests the thought that St. Luke heard what he reports from some one who repeated the very words which our Lord had spoken in Aramaic.”

Ὁ λύχνος τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν ὁ ὀφθαλμός· ἐὰν οὖν ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου ἁπλοῦς ᾖ, ὅλον τὸ σῶμά σου φωτεινὸν ἔσται· ἐὰν δὲ ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου πονηρὸς ᾖ, ὅλον τὸ σῶμά σου σκοτεινὸν ἔσται. Εἰ οὖν τὸ φῶς τὸ ἐν σοὶ σκότος ἐστίν, τὸ σκότος πόσον;

Matthew 6:22-23

Jim Myers wrote an excellent article called “Those Mysterious Eyes” from which I’ve gleaned some of the thoughts below. The key to understanding the words of Jesus in Matt. 6:22-23 is knowing what the Hebrew Old Testament says about “good eye” and “evil eye”.

The good of eye — he is blessed, For he hath given of his bread to the poor. (Prov. 22:9 YLT)

Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart… and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; (Deut. 15:9 KJV)

Here’s the NET Bible note (tn #23) for Proverbs 22:9, which could be the passage Jesus had in mind when he spoke these words: “Heb “good of eye.” This expression is an attributive genitive meaning “bountiful of eye” (cf. KJV, ASV “He that hath a bountiful eye”). This is the opposite of the “evil eye” which is covetous and wicked. The “eye” is a metonymy representing looking well to people’s needs. So this refers to the generous person (cf. NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).”

And I guess we’ll wrap it up there for now!

Sources:

• “Hebraisms” by Michael D. Marlowe (a good overview of Hebrew influence on the Greek NT).
• “New Testament Figures of Speech” compiled by Wayne Leman.
• “New Testament Idioms” compiled by Wayne Leman.

I had some nice English stationery on hand, so I decided to try to make something similar in Greek! It’s not quite the same, but pretty close, eh?

Here’s a clearer view:

Download the full PDF here, so you can print it off yourself!

Printing instructions:
The PDF is formatted as letter size (11×8.5 inches).
Print in horizontal layout and set the scale to “None” or 100%.
Do NOT select “fit to page” or you’ll get the fine print at the bottom of the page.

Enjoy! If you’d like to receive an email when I post things like this in the future, scroll to the bottom of the page, and sign up!

If you’d like to see some more stationery like this feel free to leave a comment below with suggestions for Bible verses, etc, and I’ll see what I can do.

Credits:
Free Font: Arima Madurai (Arima Greek)
Lighthouse photo by Stephen Bedase on Unsplash
Flourish image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay