StrongerBible

atimia

ἀτιμία

GreekG0819“dishonor, shame, ...”

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Rom 1:26Rom 9:211Co 11:141Co 15:432Co 6:82Co 11:212Ti 2:20
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeah-tee-MEE-ahnoun

What atimia means

1

dishonor: the public loss of honor, standing, and respect; disgrace or shame

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is the flip side of honor. In the world of the New Testament, honor and shame were the most important social currency a person had, the way worth and standing were measured in public. To suffer dishonor was not a private feeling of embarrassment but a public verdict that stripped a person of value in the eyes of the community. English "dishonor" or "shame" catches the idea but sounds thinner than the word actually was.

The writers use it across a wide range:

  • the disgrace a man courts by wearing long hair (as one culture saw it)
  • the humiliation of a body lowered into the grave
  • the loss of face that comes with a bad reputation
  • the degrading quality of passions that pull a person down

In every case the point is the same: a loss of the respect and worth that make someone count.

What is striking is how often Paul turns the word inside out. He boasts in the very dishonor his critics throw at him, and he treats the disgrace of the cross and of the buried body as the place where God's true glory breaks in. The word marks the low point that God is in the habit of reversing.

Rom 1:261Co 11:141Co 15:432Co 6:82Co 11:21
1Co 11:14

What the dishonor of a man wearing long hair consists of.

  • contestedThe specific shame of gender-transgression: long hair on a man evoked the culturally stigmatized figure of the effeminate male.; A. C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC), 843-846; D. E. Garland, 1 Corinthians (BECNT), 505-542; B. W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth, 121-141
  • contestedA diffuse Greco-Roman social convention with no specific effeminacy stigma or theological weight.; G. D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT), rev. ed., 555-588; P. B. Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ
Rom 1:26

Whether the dishonor language passes a moral judgment on the passions themselves or reframes the surrounding culture's honor code.

  • majorityA moral judgment: the passions are degrading in themselves.; C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans (ICC), 1:121-124; D. J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT), 111-114; T. R. Schreiner, Romans (BECNT), 92-95
  • minorityA rhetorical inversion of the Roman honor code, branding as dishonor what elite culture celebrated.; R. Jewett, Romans (Hermeneia), 172-179; H. Moxnes, Honor, Shame, and the Outside World in Paul's Letter to the Romans
  • minorityThe moral and honor-shame dimensions are inseparable in a first-century setting.; J. D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (WBC), 65-66; N. T. Wright, Romans (NIB)
2

common use: the low, everyday, undignified purpose of a plain household object, as opposed to one kept for honored display

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This use comes from the same word's second edge. The Greek word for honor also meant price or worth, so its opposite could mean not just disgrace but low value: the difference between a fine vase set out for guests and a plain pot kept for menial jobs.

Both New Testament examples are pictures of a large house stocked with vessels of different grades. Some are gold and silver, meant for honored occasions; others are wood or clay, meant for common, unglamorous tasks. To be a vessel "for common use" is to be assigned the lowly, ordinary role rather than the place of honor.

English translators reach for words like "common," "menial," "ordinary," or "dishonorable" here, and none of them lands perfectly, because the one Greek word holds both the idea of low status and the idea of low worth at once.

Rom 9:212Ti 2:20
Rom 9:21

Whether the vessel made for dishonor means only a vessel put to ordinary, menial use, or is loaded to anticipate the vessels destined for destruction in the following verse.

  • majorityIt concerns function only: a common, menial vessel as opposed to one made for honored display.; C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans (ICC), 2:492-493; J. D. G. Dunn, Romans 9-16 (WBC), 556-558; J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans (AB), 569
  • minorityPaul uses it in advance to point ahead to the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.; D. J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT), 601-604; T. R. Schreiner, Romans (BECNT), 517-520

What scholars say about atimia

The standard lexica converge on the New Testament sense of atimia as general Hellenistic-Jewish dishonor, disgrace, or shame (BDAG; LSJ; Schneider, TDNT 8:169-80; Louw-Nida; EDNT), not the classical Athenian legal sense of civic disenfranchisement, which had fallen out of living use by the first century. The word is the alpha-privative of time, whose meaning fuses honor and esteem with price and worth; that fusion lets atimia range from the subjective state of being dishonored to the objective sense of low value, which grounds the household-vessel usage in Romans 9:21 and 2 Timothy 2:20 (both read against Wisdom 15:7 and the Isaiah 29:16, 45:9, Jeremiah 18 potter intertexts). In the Septuagint atimia and its cognates regularly render Hebrew shame vocabulary, above all qalon, and the fixed pairing of doxa with atimia (Hosea 4:7) supplies Paul's ready-made contrast in 1 Corinthians 15:43 and 2 Corinthians 6:8. Recent scholarship reads the word within the honor-shame framework of the Mediterranean world (Malina; Neyrey, Semeia 68; deSilva, Despising Shame; Jewett, Romans), noting Paul's systematic inversion of that code, by which crucifixion, weakness, and the buried body become the site of divine honor and glory. The lexical consensus is stable; the scholarly divergence is rhetorical and theological, clustering around Romans 1:26, 1 Corinthians 11:14, and Romans 9:21.

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, s.v. ἀτιμία, 149lexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. ἀτιμίαlexicon
  • J. Schneider, "τιμή, ἀτιμία," TDNT 8:169-180theological-dictionary
  • H. Hübner, "ἀτιμία," EDNT 1:177theological-dictionary
  • J. E. Lendon, Empire of Honour (Oxford, 1997)monograph
  • D. A. deSilva, Despising Shame (SBLDS 152, 1995)monograph
  • J. H. Neyrey, "Despising the Shame of the Cross," Semeia 68 (1994): 113-137article
  • R. Jewett, Romans (Hermeneia, 2007)commentary

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

All attested forms of ἀτιμία

accusative f s

ἀτιμίαν

Rom 9:21, 2Co 11:21, 2Ti 2:20

genitive f s

ἀτιμίας

Rom 1:26, 2Co 6:8

dative f s

ἀτιμίᾳ

1Co 15:43

nominative f s

ἀτιμία

1Co 11:14