a living creature: any being that is alive, whether an ordinary animal or one of the living beings around God's throne.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This word is built straight off the Greek word for life, so at its heart it simply means "a living thing." That is worth holding onto, because it is exactly what English translations can blur. The word does not picture a wild or brutish animal; it pictures something that is alive.
In a few places it names ordinary animals: the sacrificial animals whose bodies were burned outside the camp, or the unreasoning creatures that people who follow only their instincts are compared to. Here "animal" or "creature" carries the sense well.
Everywhere else in the New Testament it names the four living creatures that surround God's throne in the book of Revelation, worshiping without pause. John deliberately calls them living creatures, not beasts. The older King James Bible rendered them "beasts," which has misled readers into hearing an echo of the monstrous Beast of Revelation, a completely different Greek word. These four are living, worshiping beings drawn from the throne visions of Ezekiel and Isaiah, and the whole point of the word is that they are alive.
Nuances
1aan ordinary animal: a living creature of the earthly world, including sacrificial animals and unreasoning beasts.
TranslatabilityDirect
Heb 13:112Pe 2:12Jud 1:10
1bone of the four living creatures around God's throne in Revelation, ceaselessly worshiping and drawn from the throne visions of Ezekiel and Isaiah.
the word is built on the Greek word for life and marks something as living, not as brutish or wild.Rev 4:6
Both
both can name a non-human creature, as with the sacrificial animals whose bodies were burned outside the camp.Heb 13:11
Only beast
"beast" suggests a wild, brutish, or monstrous animal, and pulls readers toward the Beast of Revelation, a different Greek word for a hostile power.
“animal”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How zōon differs from similar Greek words
θηρίονa wild beast, and in Revelation the monstrous Beast: the very word John avoids for the living creatures, since it carries brutality and hostility this word does not.
Names a creature simply as a living being, stressing that it is alive rather than anything about its temperament; this is the word for the heavenly living creatures who worship around the throne.Rev 4:6Rev 5:6
Can serve as a neutral term for an ordinary animal, such as a sacrificial beast whose body is burned outside the camp.Heb 13:11
Both
Both can denote irrational creatures that act on raw instinct, set in contrast to human beings who are meant to reason.2Pe 2:12Jas 3:7
Names a wild, untamed animal, often dangerous or predatory, from a venomous snake to the beasts among which Jesus lived in the wilderness.Mrk 1:13Act 28:4
Becomes the fixed label for the monstrous beast, the end-time enemy power that rises from the sea in Revelation.Rev 13:1Rev 13:11
κτῆνοςa domestic animal or beast of burden kept and used by people, a narrower and more practical term than this word for a living creature in general.
Stresses simply being alive, so it reaches past ordinary animals to the heavenly living creatures around God's throne, which are not beasts at all.Rev 4:6Rev 4:7Rev 5:6
Labels a creature a brute, unreasoning being to shame people who act on raw instinct.2Pe 2:12Jud 1:10
Both
Both can mark off animals as a class set over against human beings.2Pe 2:121Co 15:39
Names a tamed, owned animal kept for work or travel, a beast of burden that carries a rider or a load.Luk 10:34Act 23:24
Counts as livestock among a merchant's tradeable goods and property.Rev 18:13
zōon in the other biblical languages
חַיHebrew“alive”the Hebrew word for a living creature or animal; its plural names the living creatures of Ezekiel's throne vision that stand behind Revelation's four living creatures.
Names the four visionary living creatures who stand around God's heavenly throne, covered with eyes and never ceasing their worship. This throne-vision use dominates the word in the New Testament and has no counterpart in the Hebrew word, which never denotes these heavenly beings.Rev 4:6Rev 4:8Rev 5:6
Is always a concrete animate being, a creature or animal, and never works as an adjective for something that is alive or as an abstract noun for life itself. Where it simply means animal it points to the sacrificial beast whose body is burned or to the unreasoning brute driven by instinct.Heb 13:112Pe 2:12
Both
Both words name a living creature, a breathing animal set apart from plants and lifeless things, and the Greek Old Testament regularly renders the Hebrew term with the Greek one. Where each means simply animal they overlap: the Hebrew word for the creatures God makes and the Greek word for the beasts offered in sacrifice.Gen 1:24Heb 13:11
Serves as an adjective meaning alive or living, a predicate the Greek noun cannot fill. It describes a person who is still alive and stands in oaths that swear by a life, and elsewhere qualifies the living God and living, running water.Gen 45:3Gen 42:15
Also carries the abstract sense of life or lifetime, counting out the years and days a person lives. This measured span of a life is a meaning the Greek word never reaches.Gen 23:1Gen 25:7
What scholars say about zōon
ζῷον is a substantival formation on ζάω / ζωή and denotes simply a living being, in contrast to θηρίον (a wild beast) and κτῆνος (a domestic animal). BDAG and LSJ give the range from ordinary animals to the apocalyptic living beings; in the New Testament the ordinary sense appears only at Hebrews 13:11 (sacrificial victims) and in the ζῷα ἄλογα ("unreasoning animals") of 2 Peter 2:12 and Jude 10, while the remaining occurrences are the four ζῷα of Revelation 4-19. Commentators (Beale, Aune) trace those four to a fusion of the חַיּוֹת of Ezekiel 1 and 10 with the six-winged seraphim of Isaiah 6, which is why the word for a living being, not a term for a beast, is used. The King James rendering "beasts" in Revelation, conflating ζῷον with θηρίον, is widely noted as misleading.