StrongerBible

alabastron

ἀλάβαστρον

GreekG0211“alabaster jar, alabaster flask, ...”

Appears 4 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 26:7Mrk 14:3 (2×)Luk 7:37
Word studyResearch-gradea-LAB-as-tronnoun

What alabastron means

a small, narrow-necked flask for holding perfume, named after alabaster stone but in fact made of many materials.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This word names an object, not an action, and it turns up in the Bible in only one setting: a woman brings a flask of costly perfume and pours it out on Jesus. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all reach for the same rare word.

The name comes from alabaster, a fine pale stone that Egypt exported, and the earliest flasks of this kind really were carved from it. But by the first century the word had drifted from the material to the shape. It named a particular kind of container, whatever it was made of:

  • long and slender, with a narrow neck and a small lip built for pouring thick oils a little at a time
  • usually with no handles, and often with a rounded base that could not stand up on its own
  • sealed shut at the neck to keep the perfume from evaporating, so it had to be snapped or unsealed to be opened

By the time of the Gospels these flasks were being made of glass, ceramic, and even gold as well as stone, and writers used the word for all of them. The Greek poet Theocritus could even speak of "golden" flasks of this kind, which only makes sense if the word had come to mean the shape rather than the stone.

So the point of the word in the anointing scenes is not what the container was made of but what it held and what it cost. It was a luxury item holding a fortune in perfume, and the woman spent all of it at once.

Mat 26:7Mrk 14:3 (2×)Luk 7:37

Disputed

Whether the flask in the Gospel anointing scenes was actually of alabaster stone, or a perfume flask of some other material that the shape-name had come to cover by the first century.

  • majorityBy the New Testament period the word designates a perfume-flask shape regardless of material, so the Gospel vessel could as easily have been glass or ceramic as stone.; LSJ, s.v. ἀλάβαστος/ἀλάβαστρος; BDAG, s.v. ἀλάβαστρον, p. 40; Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon, domain 6.221; François Bovon, Luke 1 (Hermeneia, 2002), 291-298
  • minorityThe Gospel vessel was most likely genuine alabaster stone, the material Pliny judged best for preserving costly perfume and the kind excavated in first-century tombs near Jerusalem.; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew (ICC, 1997), 3:444; Craig Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (1999), 618

What scholars say about alabastron

Modern lexicography converges on reading ἀλάβαστρον as primarily a vessel-shape term by the first century CE: a narrow-necked, handleless perfume flask that took its name from Egyptian calcite alabaster but had come to designate such flasks in any material. BDAG (3rd ed., 40) glosses "alabaster flask," adding that it was "originally made of alabaster; then a term for a perfume vessel of any material"; LSJ (9th ed., 1:59) reads "globular vase without handles for holding perfumes, often made of alabaster"; and Louw-Nida (6.221) is most explicit that in NT times the word "could designate a jar for perfume without any implication of the material." The decisive extrabiblical datum is Theocritus, Idyll 15.114 (χρύσεια ἀλάβαστρα, "golden alabastra"), together with Delian and Athenian temple inventories that specify the material separately from the vessel type, and Pliny's distinction (NH 36.60) between the stone (alabastrites) and the flask (alabastron). Moulton-Milligan and Spicq trace the word as a container-name across papyri and inscriptions from the fifth century BCE to the fourth century CE. Etymologically the noun is treated as a pre-Greek loanword, most probably Egyptian, whether from the toponym Alabastron near the Hatnub quarries (Frisk), from a phrase meaning "vessel of the goddess Bast(et)" (Chantraine), or as a Pre-Greek substrate word (Beekes, who doubts the Bastet derivation). The word occurs once in the Septuagint (4 Kingdoms 21:13), where it renders a Hebrew word for a dish, confirming that Hellenistic Jewish usage had already generalized it beyond the stone flask. On the Synoptic occurrences, Davies-Allison, France, Keener, Yarbro Collins, Marcus, Plummer, and Bovon supply the fullest philological notes; Mark's participle συντρίψασα ("having broken") is read by most as the functional opening of a sealed one-use flask, with a recognized symbolic overtone of total, irrevocable expenditure, while Gundry argues the breaking is purely symbolic and Hunt proposes it reflects a glass vessel that had to be shattered.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDAG (Bauer-Danker), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. ἀλάβαστρον, p. 40lexicon
  • LSJ (Liddell-Scott-Jones), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (1940), s.v. ἀλάβαστος/ἀλάβαστρος, 1:59lexicon
  • Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, domain 6.221lexicon
  • Moulton-Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (1929), s.v. ἀλάβαστρονlexicon
  • Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (1994), 1:68-71lexicon
  • Robert Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Brill, 2010), s.v. ἀλάβαστοςlexicon
  • Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (1968), 1:55lexicon
  • W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew (ICC, 1997), 3:444commentary
  • Craig Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (1999), 618commentary
  • Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark (Hermeneia, 2007), 640-645commentary
  • Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16 (Anchor Yale Bible 27A, 2009), 931-941commentary
  • François Bovon, Luke 1 (Hermeneia, 2002), 291-298commentary
  • Alfred Plummer, The Gospel According to St. Luke (ICC, 5th ed., 1922), 210-216commentary
  • Robert Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (1993), 810-815commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of ἀλάβαστρον

accusative f s

ἀλάβαστρον

Mrk 14:3, Mrk 14:3

accusative n s

ἀλάβαστρον

Mat 26:7, Luk 7:37