StrongerBible

arrēn, arsēn

ἄρρην, ἄρσην

GreekG0730male, men, ...

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 19:4Mrk 10:6Luk 2:23Rom 1:27 (3×)Gal 3:28Rev 12:5Rev 12:13
Names & words formed with this
Word studyAR-saneadjective

What arrēn, arsēn means

male: of the male sex, whether named as the category set beside female or as a particular male individual

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This is Greek's plain word for the male sex. It says nothing about age, standing, or role, unlike the ordinary word for a grown man or a husband (ἀνήρ). It simply sorts a living thing into one of the two sexes, which is why the New Testament can use it of a newborn as readily as of an adult, and why its natural partner is the matching word for female (θῆλυς).

Most of its New Testament appearances trace back to a single Old Testament sentence. Answering a question about divorce, Jesus quotes the creation account: God made them "male and female" (Matthew 19:4, Mark 10:6). Paul reaches for the same two words in Galatians 3:28, and one small signal gives the quotation away. His first two pairs are joined by "nor" (Jew nor Greek, slave nor free), but the third is joined by "and," exactly as the Greek Old Testament joins them in Genesis. He is quoting, not merely continuing a list.

The remaining uses point at an actual male. Luke cites the law that every firstborn male belongs to the Lord (Luke 2:23). Revelation twice calls the woman's child a male (Revelation 12:5, 12:13), and the second time the Greek says only "the male," leaving "child" to be supplied from the story. In Romans 1:27 Paul writes of "males" where he could have written "men," holding the reader's attention on sex rather than on adulthood or status.

The word also supplies half of the term Paul coins for a man who takes another male sexually (ἀρσενοκοίτης), which welds this word to the word for a bed.

Nuances

1amale as one of the two sexes: the category set beside female, echoing the creation account
Mat 19:4Mrk 10:6Gal 3:28
1ba male person: one particular individual of the male sex
Luk 2:23Rom 1:27 (3×)Rev 12:5Rev 12:13

What scholars say about arrēn, arsēn

The lexicons are unanimous on the sense. BDAG and LSJ give simply "male," used both adjectivally and substantivally, of humans and of animals; the Attic spelling ἄρρην and the Ionic and Koine ἄρσην stand side by side in the manuscript tradition, and editors differ over which to print at Romans 1:27 and Revelation 12:5. The word's New Testament profile is dominated by the Septuagint, where ἄρσην is the standard rendering of Hebrew זָכָר: six of its seven verses either quote or allude to Genesis 1:27 (ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτούς) or to the firstborn legislation of Exodus 13:2, 12. In Galatians 3:28 the shift from οὐδέ in the first two pairs to καί in the third is widely taken as the marker of a Genesis citation (Betz, Longenecker, Martyn, de Boer), and it grounds a long debate over whether Paul's third pair asserts an eschatological undoing of the creation distinction (Betz, Boyarin) or an equality of standing within it (Moo). That debate concerns the force of Paul's sentence, not the lexical meaning of the word. In Romans 1:27 the choice of ἄρσην and θῆλυς rather than ἀνήρ and γυνή is commonly read as deliberate creation language (Dunn, Hays, Gagnon). Revelation 12:5's υἱὸν ἄρσεν, a neuter adjective standing awkwardly beside a masculine noun, is a much-discussed irregularity, explained variously as Semitic interference echoing Isaiah 66:7 or as attraction to the neuter τέκνον that follows; it raises no question about the word's sense.

Sources

  • BDAG (3rd ed., 2000), s.v. ἄρσηνlexicon
  • LSJ, A Greek-English Lexicon (9th ed. with revised supplement), s.v. ἄρσηνlexicon
  • Horst Balz and Gerhard Schneider, eds., Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, s.v. ἄρσηνdictionary
  • Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 195-200commentary
  • Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians (WBC 41; Dallas: Word, 1990), 157-58commentary
  • J. Louis Martyn, Galatians (AB 33A; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 375-83commentary
  • Martinus C. de Boer, Galatians (NTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 245-48commentary
  • Douglas J. Moo, Galatians (BECNT; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 249-55commentary
  • Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 180-200monograph
  • James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (WBC 38A; Dallas: Word, 1988), 64-65commentary
  • Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 386-89monograph
  • Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 289-93monograph
  • G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 639-40commentary

All attested forms of ἄρρην, ἄρσην

accusative n s

ἄρσεν

Mat 19:4, Mrk 10:6, Rev 12:5

nominative m p

ἄρσενες

Rom 1:27, Rom 1:27

nominative n s

ἄρσεν

Luk 2:23, Gal 3:28

accusative m s

ἄρσενα

Rev 12:13

dative m p

ἄρσεσιν

Rom 1:27