StrongerBible

dialektos

διάλεκτος

GreekG1258“language, dialect, ...”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Act 1:19Act 2:6Act 2:8Act 21:40Act 22:2Act 26:14
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradedee-AL-ek-tosnoun

What dialektos means

language: the spoken tongue of a particular nation or people

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This word means "a language", the actual spoken tongue of a nation or ethnic group. It appears only in Acts, and every time it points to a real human language that a real group of people speaks. Luke uses it interchangeably with the more common Greek word for tongue or language (γλῶσσα), and standard reference works line up behind that plain sense.

At Pentecost the crowd hears the disciples speaking, as the text puts it, "each in his own language", and the list of nations that follows (Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and the rest) shows these are known, distinct national languages, not a vague manner of speaking. Scholars still argue about what actually happened at Pentecost:

  • whether the disciples miraculously spoke unlearned foreign languages
  • whether Luke is composing a reversal of the tower of Babel
  • whether the languages involved were only the everyday Aramaic and Greek the disciples already knew

But that debate is about the event, not about this word: the word plainly means "real languages".

Three times the word appears in the phrase translated "in the Hebrew language", describing how Paul addresses the Jerusalem crowd and how the voice from heaven addresses Paul. Here too the word simply means "language". What scholars dispute is the meaning of the accompanying word "Hebrew": most take it to mean "the everyday Aramaic of first century Jerusalem", while a growing minority argue it means "Hebrew proper, the sacred language". Again, that question rides on the other word in the phrase, not on this one.

A note on the English word "dialect", which comes straight from this Greek word: in modern English a dialect is a regional or social sub-variety ranked beneath a standard language, but the Greek word carried no such ranking. In the Greek of the New Testament era it was simply the word for "a people's language", the way writers like Josephus and Philo used it.

Act 1:19Act 2:6Act 2:8Act 21:40Act 22:2Act 26:14

What scholars say about dialektos

The major lexica converge on a single New Testament sense: BDAG defines the word as the language of a nation or a region and files all six Acts occurrences there; Louw and Nida place it in semantic domain 33.2 (Language) and treat the more common term as its near-synonym; Moulton and Milligan confirm the ordinary Koine meaning language of a nation from the documentary papyri; TDNT and EDNT agree. LSJ preserves the wider classical range (conversation, articulate speech, national language, regional variety), because the word drifted from an earlier sense conversation or discourse, from the verb to converse, toward language of a people by the second century BC. Specialists in the history of the term (notably Van Rooy, Language or Dialect?, OUP 2020) stress that in first-century Greek it was more often than not a synonym of the ordinary word for tongue and carried none of the modern subordinating distinction between language and dialect; Josephus, Philo, Strabo, and Polybius use it freely for any national tongue. Two live debates ride on top of the word without touching its sense. At Pentecost, whether Luke narrates genuine xenolalia (Keener, Witherington, Bock, Johnson), a stylized Babel reversal of doubtful historicity (Haenchen, Pervo, Conzelmann, Barrett), or a diglossic event confined to Aramaic and Greek (Zerhusen, Beare), is a question about the event, not the word. For the phrase in the Hebrew language (Acts 21:40; 22:2; 26:14), the majority following Dalman and Fitzmyer, and BDAG, take Hebrew to mean Aramaic, while a growing minority led by Buth and Pierce argue for Hebrew proper on the basis of a systematic survey of Second Temple Greek usage; that dispute concerns the word Hebrew, not this word, on whose meaning both camps agree.

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 (Bauer, Danker, Arndt, Gingrich), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. διάλεκτοςlexicon
  • Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (1989), §33.2lexicon
  • Moulton and Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (1930), s.v. διάλεκτοςlexicon
  • Liddell, Scott, Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (1940), s.v. διάλεκτοςlexicon
  • T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters, 2009), s.v. διάλεκτοςlexicon
  • G. Kittel and G. Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, γλῶσσα article (J. Behm) and διαλέγομαι article (G. Schrenk)theological-dictionary
  • Balz and Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (Eerdmans, 1990-93), vol. 1, s.v. διάλεκτοςtheological-dictionary
  • Raf Van Rooy, Language or Dialect? The History of a Conceptual Pair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)monograph
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Languages of Palestine in the First Century A.D., Catholic Biblical Quarterly 32.4 (1970): 501-531article
  • Randall Buth and Chad Pierce, Hebraisti in Ancient Texts: Does Ἑβραϊστί Ever Mean 'Aramaic'?, in Buth and Notley, eds., The Language Environment of First Century Judaea (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 66-109article
  • Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012)commentary

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

All attested forms of διάλεκτος

dative f s

διαλέκτῳ

Act 1:19, Act 2:6, Act 2:8, Act 21:40, Act 22:2, Act 26:14