StrongerBible

zēlōtēs

ζηλωτής

GreekG2207“zealot, zealous, ...”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Act 21:20Act 22:31Co 14:12Gal 1:14Tit 2:141Pe 3:13
Root family
Word studydzay-lo-TACEnoun

What zēlōtēs means

a zealot: a person whose commitment to some cause, law, or way of life is total and openly shown

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

The picture behind this word is heat. It belongs to the family of ζῆλος, the boiling ardor that can either warm or scald, and it names the person in whom that heat burns. Someone called this is not merely interested in a cause: that person has taken its side and will defend it.

Greek usually tells you straight away what the heat is aimed at, because the word almost always comes attached to the thing the person burns for. That attachment is what ties these uses together and what tells them apart:

  • devotion to God himself and to the law he gave (Acts 21:20; Acts 22:3)
  • devotion to the traditions handed down from the fathers (Galatians 1:14)
  • eagerness for spiritual gifts, for what is good, and for good works (1 Corinthians 14:12; 1 Peter 3:13; Titus 2:14)

Paul uses the word of his younger self, and he does not mean it as a confession of a bad attitude. He means his devotion was total and public, standing in the honored line of Israel's zealous heroes such as Phinehas and Elijah. Yet that same total devotion is what drove him to hunt down the church, which is why he can describe it without embarrassment and still count his old life a loss.

Two verses use the word as a name rather than a description: one of the twelve apostles is simply called "Simon the Zealot" (Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). Whether that nickname marked him as part of an armed resistance movement, or only described a man known for fierce loyalty to the law, is one of the genuinely open questions about the twelve.

Nuances

1aburning with devotion to God, to his law, and to the traditions handed down
Act 21:20Act 22:3Gal 1:14
1beager for something good: wholly set on gaining or doing what is worth having
1Co 14:12Tit 2:141Pe 3:13
1c"the Zealot": the standing nickname of the apostle Simon
CertaintyContested
Luk 6:15Act 1:13
Luk 6:15

What the nickname "the Zealot" identifies about the apostle Simon in Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13: membership in an organized revolutionary movement, or a personal reputation for religious zeal.

  • majorityThe epithet marks personal religious zeal for the law, in the tradition of Phinehas, since an organized party called the Zealots is not attested before the revolt of 66 CE.; Morton Smith, "Zealots and Sicarii, Their Origins and Relations," Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971): 1-19; Richard A. Horsley, "The Zealots: Their Origin, Relationships and Importance in the Jewish Revolt," Novum Testamentum 28 (1986): 159-192; David M. Rhoads, Israel in Revolution: 6-74 C.E.: A Political History Based on the Writings of Josephus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976)
  • minorityThe epithet places Simon within a continuous militant freedom movement reaching back to Judas the Galilean, so the label already carried a political and revolutionary sense in his lifetime.; Martin Hengel, The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish Freedom Movement in the Period from Herod I until 70 A.D., trans. David Smith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989)
Variants

The same word in another spelling or form.

ζηλωτής“Zealot”This is the very same word ζηλωτής (zelotes), "zealot," counted separately only because in two verses it stands as the nickname of one of the twelve apostles, "Simon the Zealot." Nothing about the word itself changes: it still means a person on fire for a cause. What differs is that here it is attached to a man as his identifying label rather than describing a quality in general. Because it is one and the same word, it is explained under the general entry.

What scholars say about zēlōtēs

BDAG divides ζηλωτής into two senses: (1) one who is earnestly committed to a side or cause, an enthusiast or adherent, regularly construed with an objective genitive naming what is pursued (τοῦ νόμου, Acts 21:20; τοῦ θεοῦ, Acts 22:3; τῶν πατρικῶν παραδόσεων, Gal 1:14; πνευμάτων, 1 Cor 14:12; τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, 1 Pet 3:13; καλῶν ἔργων, Titus 2:14), and (2) Zealot as a party designation in Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13. LSJ documents the same construction in classical and Hellenistic Greek, where the noun ranges from admirer and emulator to partisan. Stumpff (TDNT 2:877-888) and Silva (NIDNTTE) situate the New Testament usage in the Jewish zeal tradition running from Phinehas (Num 25:11-13) and Elijah (1 Kgs 19:10) through the Maccabees; the Septuagint uses the ζῆλος group to render the qn' root, including the divine self-designation θεὸς ζηλωτής for qanna' (Exod 20:5; 34:14). The historical question of Simon's epithet is contested. Hengel (The Zealots) reconstructed a continuous Jewish freedom movement from Judas the Galilean (6 CE) to the revolt, in which the label would already have been political; Smith, Horsley, and Rhoads argue on Josephus that the Zealots as an organized coalition emerged only in the winter of 67-68 CE, so the Lukan epithet more plausibly reflects personal zeal for the law or an earlier, looser militancy, with Matthew and Mark's Καναναῖος (Aramaic qan'ana) as the underlying label Luke renders into Greek. Fitzmyer (Acts, AB 31) follows this reading. Commentators on the Pastoral Epistles observe that ζηλωτὴν καλῶν ἔργων in Titus 2:14 belongs to the vocabulary of Hellenistic civic benefaction as well as to the Septuagint's covenant language of a treasured people (Dibelius and Conzelmann; Marshall, ICC). Lappenga's monosemy argument about the ζῆλος group bears on the wider family rather than on the sense of the agent noun itself.

Sources

  • Frederick W. Danker, ed., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. ζηλωτήςlexicon
  • Henry Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with revised supplement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940), s.v. ζηλωτήςlexicon
  • Albrecht Stumpff, "ζῆλος κτλ.," in Kittel and Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Eerdmans, 1964), 2:877-888dictionary
  • Moisés Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, rev. ed. (Zondervan, 2014), s.v. ζῆλοςdictionary
  • Martin Hengel, The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish Freedom Movement in the Period from Herod I until 70 A.D., trans. David Smith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989)monograph
  • Morton Smith, "Zealots and Sicarii, Their Origins and Relations," Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971): 1-19article
  • Richard A. Horsley, "The Zealots: Their Origin, Relationships and Importance in the Jewish Revolt," Novum Testamentum 28 (1986): 159-192article
  • David M. Rhoads, Israel in Revolution: 6-74 C.E.: A Political History Based on the Writings of Josephus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976)monograph
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, Anchor Bible 31 (New York: Doubleday, 1998), ad 1:13commentary
  • I. Howard Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), ad Titus 2:14commentary
  • Martin Dibelius and Hans Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), ad Titus 2:14commentary
  • Benjamin J. Lappenga, Paul's Language of Ζῆλος: Monosemy and the Rhetoric of Identity and Practice, Biblical Interpretation Series 137 (Brill, 2016)monograph

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

All attested forms of ζηλωτής

nominative m p

ζηλωταὶ, ζηλωταί

Act 21:20, 1Pe 3:13, 1Co 14:12

nominative m s

ζηλωτὴς

Act 22:3, Gal 1:14

accusative m s

ζηλωτὴν

Tit 2:14