diasōzō

Greek has a plain, common verb for saving (σῴζω), which stretches all the way from pulling a drowning man out of the water to healing the sick to eternal salvation. This word is that verb with a prefix meaning "through," and the prefix does real work: it puts the whole passage in view, from the danger on one side to solid ground on the other. Someone is in mortal trouble, and the word stays with them until they are out of it.

Six of its eight appearances belong to Luke, and most of those to the story of Paul's shipwreck, where the only question that matters in the chapter is whether the people on board will reach the beach alive. The remaining two use it of sickness. That is not really a second idea, but the same one applied to a different danger: a servant who is about to die is brought through his illness, and sick people who touch the edge of Jesus' cloak come out the other side well.

The word turns up in three shapes:

• someone with the power to do it carries another person through the danger, as when soldiers escort Paul by night or a commanding officer overrules the plan to kill the prisoners
• the endangered people themselves come through alive and reach dry land
• a person who is dangerously ill is brought through the sickness to full health

In the New Testament it never carries the spiritual sense of being saved. The plain verb can carry that weight, and a word like ῥύομαι pictures a hand reaching into the danger and snatching someone out of it, but this one keeps its eye on a particular threat and on the far side of it.