centurion: a career military officer who commanded a company of roughly a hundred soldiers (in practice about eighty), normally in the Roman army or one modeled on it
The word means, quite literally, "a commander of a hundred," built from the Greek words for "hundred" and "to command." By the first century it had become the standard Greek name for the Roman centurion, the professional backbone of the army. A centurion ranked well below the aristocratic officers and well above the ordinary soldiers, was paid many times a common soldier's wage, and led a company that was nominally a hundred men but in practice closer to eighty.
Almost every centurion in the New Testament was an officer of the auxiliary forces rather than of a regular legion, since the region around Judea had no legion stationed in it before the year 70. These officers did far more than fight. They escorted prisoners on long journeys, carried out floggings and executions, and acted as the everyday face of Roman authority in the provinces. That is why they turn up at Jesus' crucifixion, at Paul's arrest and imprisonment, and on the voyage that took Paul to Rome.
The word never entirely lost its older, wider meaning of a commander of a hundred in any army, which is why the officer at Capernaum is hard to pin down: many scholars think he served Herod Antipas, not Rome. Across the Gospels and Acts these officers receive a strikingly warm and consistent portrayal, a deliberate pattern in which the most visible representative of the empire keeps speaking well of Jesus.
Nuances
Whether the centurion at Capernaum was a Roman officer or an officer of Herod Antipas, whose territory of Galilee had no Roman garrison at this time.
- majorityAn officer of Herod Antipas: Galilee then had no Roman troops, and Antipas maintained his own army built on Roman lines; the parallel account calls the man a royal official.; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (Anchor Bible), 1:651; Francois Bovon, Luke (Hermeneia), 1:259-60; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC), 2:18
- minorityA Roman centurion, the ordinary sense the title carries in the New Testament era.; BDAG, s.v. ἑκατόνταρχος