StrongerBible

biōtikos

βιωτικός

GreekG0982“this life, everyday”

Appears 3 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Luk 21:341Co 6:31Co 6:4
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradebee-oh-tee-KOSSadjective

What biōtikos means

pertaining to everyday life: the ordinary, practical, day-to-day business of living

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This word simply means "belonging to everyday life," the sphere of ordinary practical concerns: money, property, work, and the daily business of getting by. It is built on the Greek word for life-as-lived, βίος (one's livelihood and manner of living), and not on ζωή, the word the New Testament reserves for life as a vital principle and elevates in phrases like "eternal life." So it points to the temporal, down-to-earth side of living rather than to existence itself.

The word itself is neutral and descriptive. It was a common, ordinary word in everyday Greek, used outside the Bible for the practical necessities of life and even for routine legal and business affairs. Any negative flavor it seems to carry in the New Testament comes from the surrounding sentence, not from the word.

Both of its New Testament settings show this. In Luke 21:34 "the cares of this life" are ordinary worries about food and money that, like drunkenness, can weigh a heart down and leave a person unready for the day of the Lord; the danger is being consumed by them, not the responsibilities themselves. In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul calls the believers' lawsuits "everyday matters": these are civil disputes over property and money, not criminal cases, and small next to the destiny of people who will one day judge the world and even angels.

Luk 21:341Co 6:31Co 6:4
1Co 6:3

Whether Paul calls the Corinthians' lawsuits "everyday matters" to belittle them or merely to categorize them.

  • contestedPaul deflates the disputes as the trivial, everyday details of common life, shaming believers who are destined to judge angels for quarrelling over such petty affairs before pagan judges.; Archibald Robertson and Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians (ICC)
  • contestedThe word is a neutral, almost technical category label for ordinary civil matters; the offense lies in believers suing believers before outsiders and in the contrast with their coming role as judges, not in any sneer at the subject.; BDAG, s.v. βιωτικός

What scholars say about biōtikos

The lexica are essentially unanimous on the core sense: BDAG glosses βιωτικός "belonging to (daily) life," Thayer "pertaining to life and the affairs of this life," and Louw-Nida places it in the domain of behavior and everyday states. The word is formed on βίος (life-as-lived, livelihood) through βιόω, and its stock collocation in wider Greek is χρεῖαι βιωτικαί, "the necessities of life" (Polybius, Diodorus, Philo). It is common Koine rather than literary Attic, and the Atticist Phrynichus condemned it precisely as a non-Attic everyday usage; documentary papyri attest a semi-technical sense (βιωτικὰ σύμβολα, "business documents"; βιωτικά, "provisions" or "private matters") that fits Paul's κριτήρια βιωτικά well, a parallel drawn out by Moulton and Milligan's Vocabulary of the Greek Testament and by Spicq. It does not occur in the Septuagint. R. C. Trench's Synonyms of the New Testament classically contrasts βίος with ζωή, but James Barr's warning against illegitimate totality transfer applies: the word denotes "everyday, temporal" and does not itself carry a freight of "worldliness." On 1 Corinthians 6, Ciampa and Rosner stress that βιωτικά marks civil rather than criminal matters; commentators divide over Paul's tone (Robertson and Plummer read a deliberate belittling, others a neutral category label), and over the forum, where the majority (Fee, Thiselton, Conzelmann, Fitzmyer, Winter) reads official Roman civil courts while a minority (Fuller, and Roi Ziv in NTS 2024) argues for private arbitration; Winter and Mitchell add that status-driven, sometimes vexatious litigation by the wealthy lies behind the problem. On either reading the meaning of the adjective is not in dispute.

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. βιωτικόςlexicon
  • Joseph Henry Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. βιωτικόςlexicon
  • R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testamentmonograph
  • James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Languagemonograph
  • James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testamentlexicon
  • Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians (Pillar New Testament Commentary)commentary
  • Archibald Robertson and Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians (ICC)commentary
  • Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT)commentary
  • Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC)commentary
  • Bruce W. Winter, "Civil Litigation in Secular Corinth and the Church: The Forensic Background to 1 Corinthians 6.1-8," New Testament Studies 37 (1991): 559-72article
  • Roi Ziv, "First Corinthians 6.1-6: Roman Court or Private Arbitration?" New Testament Studies 70 (2024): 160-73article

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

All attested forms of βιωτικός

accusative n p

βιωτικά, βιωτικὰ

1Co 6:3, 1Co 6:4

dative f p

βιωτικαῖς

Luk 21:34