StrongerBible

Belial

Βελιάρ

GreekG0955“Belial, Beliar, ...”

Appears 1 time · tap a cell to see the verses

2Co 6:15
Word studyResearch-gradebeh-lee-ALnoun

What Belial means

Beliar: a Jewish name for Satan, the ruler of evil, named as the exact opposite of Christ

TranslatabilityUntranslatableCertaintySettled

This word appears once in the whole New Testament, in 2 Corinthians 6:15, where it names the being the New Testament usually calls Satan (Σατανᾶς) or the devil (διάβολος). The verse asks what agreement Christ has with him, and the expected answer is none at all.

The name has a long history behind it. In the Old Testament the Hebrew word behind it (בליעל) is not a name at all but an insult meaning "worthlessness" or "good for nothing," used most often in the phrase "sons of Belial," that is, scoundrels. The ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament never carried the word over as a name; it used ordinary words for a lawless or worthless person instead. Only in Jewish writings from the centuries just before the New Testament, above all the Dead Sea Scrolls, does the word harden into the personal name of a prince of darkness who commands the forces of evil against God.

By the time this letter was written that use was standard, and the verse assumes its readers know it. The paragraph it sits in is built out of stark pairs: right living against lawlessness, light against darkness, Christ against Beliar, a believer against an unbeliever, God's temple against idols. Naming Satan "Beliar" sets him at the far end of that line, as the dark counterpart to Christ himself.

The spelling is worth noticing. The Greek here ends in r, "Beliar," rather than the l of the Hebrew form, "Belial." Scholars trace the change to the way the name was said in Aramaic and related languages, and the r spelling is the usual one in Jewish Greek writings of the period.

2Co 6:15
2Co 6:15

Whether 2 Corinthians 6:14 to 7:1, the paragraph containing this word, is a non-Pauline interpolation, a pre-existing fragment Paul adapted, or Paul's own composition. The presence of this name, which Paul never uses elsewhere, together with the paragraph's Qumran-like light and darkness dualism and its otherwise rare vocabulary, is a central piece of evidence in the argument.

  • contestedThe paragraph is a non-Pauline insertion, Jewish or Essene in character, placed into the letter by a later hand; on the strongest form of this view its theology is not merely un-Pauline but opposed to Paul.; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, "Qumran and the Interpolated Paragraph in 2 Cor 6:14-7:1," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 23 (1961): 271-280; Hans Dieter Betz, "2 Cor 6:14-7:1: An Anti-Pauline Fragment?" Journal of Biblical Literature 92 (1973): 88-108; Joachim Gnilka, "2 Cor 6:14-7:1 in the Light of the Qumran Texts and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs," in Paul and Qumran, ed. J. Murphy-O'Connor (1968)
  • contestedThe paragraph is a pre-existing fragment shaped by Qumran-style thinking that Paul himself modified and inserted at this point in the letter.; Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians, Word Biblical Commentary (1985)
  • contestedPaul wrote the paragraph himself, drawing on Jewish apocalyptic language he shared with his contemporaries; its temple imagery has genuine parallels elsewhere in his letters.; Bertil Gärtner, The Temple and the Community in Qumran and the New Testament (Cambridge, 1965)

What scholars say about Belial

BDAG and Thayer gloss the word at 2 Corinthians 6:15 as a name of Satan. The critical editions (NA28, UBS5, SBLGNT, Westcott-Hort) print Βελιάρ, supported by Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Ephraemi, L and P and most versions, against Βελίαν (Claromontanus, K, many Byzantine cursives, and the manuscripts known to Jerome) and Βελίαλ (the Vulgate and the King James tradition); Βελιάρ is preferred both for its early Alexandrian support and as the harder reading, since scribes would assimilate the odd final resh toward the familiar Old Testament form. The standard reference treatments of the underlying Hebrew term are T. J. Lewis in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, B. Otzen in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, and the Belial entry in the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible; all three trace a development from an abstract noun to a personal name. The Septuagint renders בְּלִיַּעַל with common nouns (παράνομος, ἀνομία, λοιμός, ἄφρων, ἀσεβής) rather than transliterating it, which is the principal evidence that it was still read as a quality in the translators' period; Emerton, "Sheol and the Sons of Belial," Vetus Testamentum 37 (1987): 214-36, is the standard treatment of the death and underworld strand of the etymology. Personification is fully developed only in the sectarian and pseudepigraphic literature: over seventy occurrences at Qumran (1QS, including the Treatise on the Two Spirits; 1QM; CD, with the three nets of Belial; 1QH; 4Q174; 11Q13), and in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Jubilees, the Ascension of Isaiah and the Sibylline Oracles, where the Greek spelling with final resh predominates and the figure takes on an eschatological cast later associated with antichrist traditions. Floyd (Minor Prophets, Eerdmans, 2000) cautions against reading that personification back into Nahum. The final lamed to resh shift is usually explained as Aramaic or Syriac pronunciation (so Forsyth, The Old Enemy, Princeton, 1987, 201) or as ordinary interchange of liquids. On the literary integrity of 2 Corinthians 6:14 to 7:1 see the dispute recorded on the verse; Thrall (ICC, 1994) and Harris (NIGTC, 2005) survey the debate without a settled verdict.

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. Βελιάρlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. בְּלִיַּעַלlexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. בְּלִיַּעַלlexicon
  • Theodore J. Lewis, "Belial," in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 654-56dictionary
  • B. Otzen, "beliyya'al," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 131-36dictionary
  • S. David Sperling, "Belial," in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. K. van der Toorn et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1999)dictionary
  • J. A. Emerton, "Sheol and the Sons of Belial," Vetus Testamentum 37 (1987): 214-36article
  • Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 201monograph
  • Maxwell J. Davidson, Angels at Qumran (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992)monograph
  • Margaret E. Thrall, 2 Corinthians, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994)commentary
  • Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005)commentary
  • Michael H. Floyd, Minor Prophets, Part 2, Forms of the Old Testament Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000)commentary

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

All attested forms of Βελιάρ

accusative m s

Βελιάρ

2Co 6:15