StrongerBible

blasphēmia

βλασφημία

GreekG0988blasphemy, slander

Appears 18 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 12:31 (2×)Mat 15:19Mat 26:65Mrk 3:28Mrk 7:22Mrk 14:64Luk 5:21Jhn 10:33Eph 4:31Col 3:81Ti 6:4Jud 1:9Rev 2:9Rev 13:1Rev 13:5Rev 13:6Rev 17:3
Root family
Word studyblas-fay-MEE-ahnoun

What blasphēmia means

injurious speech that insults and tears down its target: blasphemy when aimed at God, slander when aimed at people.

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

One Greek word covers a whole spread of abusive speech, from cursing God to running down a neighbor. What holds it together is not the target but the intent: speech meant to insult, defame, and drag something down. English has no single word for that, so translations split it in two. When the target is God or what is sacred, they render it "blasphemy"; when the target is another person, they render it "slander," "reviling," or "evil speaking."

The God-directed use is the sharper one. It is the charge brought against Jesus for claiming what belongs to God alone, and it is the roaring, God-defying speech of the beast in Revelation. The most solemn instance is the warning about speaking against the Holy Spirit.

The people-directed use sits in the New Testament lists of things a changed heart leaves behind, alongside anger, malice, and filthy talk. Here it is close in force to plain verbal abuse: tearing someone down with words, whether or not the charge is even true.

Because the two shades share a single word, the New Testament can move between them easily, and a reader who only hears "blasphemy" as a religious term can miss that the same word is also the ordinary word for slander. Two close relatives narrow the people-directed side: λοιδορία is abusive railing to someone's face, and καταλαλιά is running someone down behind their back.

Nuances

1ablasphemy: insulting or defiant speech against God, against Christ, or against what is sacred.
TranslatabilityDirect
Mat 12:31 (2×)Mat 26:65Mrk 3:28Mrk 14:64Luk 5:21Jhn 10:33Rev 13:1Rev 13:5Rev 13:6Rev 17:3
1bslander: abusive, reviling speech that defames or tears down other people.
TranslatabilityApproximate
Mat 15:19Mrk 7:22Eph 4:31Col 3:81Ti 6:4Jud 1:9Rev 2:9

What scholars say about blasphēmia

The critical lexica treat this as a single noun for injurious, defamatory speech, with the referent (God or a human being) fixed by context rather than by two separate lemmata. BDAG glosses it as "slander, defamation, blasphemy" and groups the occurrences by object; Louw-Nida assigns the God-directed uses and the human-directed uses to distinct semantic subdomains (33.400 and 33.397) while recognizing one lexeme. TDNT (Beyer) and EDNT trace the New Testament weighting toward speech against God, especially in the Gospels' passion narratives and in Revelation's portrait of the beast, while noting the vice-list use of ordinary human slander (Mark 7:22; Ephesians 4:31; Colossians 3:8). There is no live dispute about the word's meaning; the only classificatory questions are per-verse, e.g. whether an unmarked vice-list occurrence (Mark 7:22; Matthew 15:19) or the opposition at Revelation 2:9 is best read as human slander or as irreverence toward God.

Sources

  • BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), s.v. βλασφημίαlexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 33.397, 33.400lexicon
  • Hermann W. Beyer, "βλασφημέω, βλασφημία, βλάσφημος," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 1:621-625dictionary
  • Otto Hofius, "βλασφημία," in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (EDNT) 1:220-221dictionary

All attested forms of βλασφημία

genitive f s

βλασφημίας

Mrk 14:64, Jhn 10:33, Jud 1:9, Rev 13:1, Rev 17:3

nominative f s

βλασφημία

Mat 12:31, Mat 12:31, Mrk 7:22, Eph 4:31

accusative f p

βλασφημίας

Luk 5:21, Rev 13:5, Rev 13:6

accusative f s

βλασφημίαν

Mat 26:65, Col 3:8, Rev 2:9

nominative f p

βλασφημίαι

Mat 15:19, Mrk 3:28, 1Ti 6:4