StrongerBible

theos

θεός

GreekG2316“God, god”

Appears 1346 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 1:23Mat 3:9Mat 3:16Mat 4:3Mat 4:4Mat 4:6Mat 4:7Mat 4:10Mat 5:8Mat 5:9Mat 5:34Mat 6:8Mat 6:24Mat 6:30Mat 6:33Mat 8:29Mat 9:8Mat 12:4Mat 12:28 (2×)Mat 14:33Mat 15:4Mat 15:31Mat 19:6Mat 19:17Mat 19:26Mat 22:21Mat 22:32 (5×)Mat 22:37Mat 27:43Mat 27:46 (2×)Mrk 2:7Mrk 2:12Mrk 5:7Mrk 10:6Mrk 10:9Mrk 10:18Mrk 10:27 (2×)Mrk 12:17Mrk 12:26Mrk 12:30Mrk 15:34 (2×)Luk 1:16Luk 1:30Luk 1:47Luk 1:64Luk 2:13Luk 2:14Luk 2:20Luk 2:28Luk 2:38
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Word studyResearch-gradetheh-OSSnoun

What theos means

1

God: the one true God, Maker and Judge of everything there is, named so consistently in the New Testament that the word works almost like a personal name

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Greek had this word long before the Bible, and it meant "a god," one of many. The writers of the New Testament took it over and used it, almost without exception, for one particular God: the God of Israel, who made the world and will judge it. They inherited that habit from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, where this word stands in for the ordinary Hebrew word for God (אֱלֹהִים) while God's personal covenant name (יהוה) is normally rendered by the word for Lord (κύριος).

That division of labor carries straight over. Across the New Testament, and in Paul above all, "God" points to the Father and "Lord" points to Jesus. So when Paul writes that for us there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, he is not demoting Jesus; he is spreading the words of Israel's great confession of faith across the two of them. Missing this habit is the commonest way to misread the word: it is not a general term for "the divine" but the name of someone with a history, promises, and a covenant people.

A small and carefully worded set of passages goes further and uses the word of Jesus himself. Only a couple of these are agreed by everyone; the rest are argued over, and the arguments usually turn on a punctuation mark or a manuscript reading rather than on what the word means. The senses below sort this out: the ordinary use for the one God, the sharpened use for the Father in particular, and the handful of places where the Son is called God.

Nuances

1athe one true God: the God of Israel, Maker and Judge of all, who is worshiped, prayed to, and obeyed
Mat 4:7Mat 4:10Mat 5:8Mat 19:26Mat 22:32 (5×)Mrk 10:18Mrk 10:27 (2×)Mrk 12:29Mrk 12:32Luk 1:37Luk 18:19Jhn 3:16
1bGod the Father in particular, named as such alongside Jesus, who is called Lord
Jhn 17:3Jhn 20:17Rom 1:7Rom 15:61Co 8:61Co 15:242Co 1:32Co 11:31Gal 1:1Eph 1:3Eph 1:17Eph 4:6
1cused of Jesus himself, confessing that what makes God God is fully his
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
Jhn 1:1Jhn 1:18Jhn 10:33Jhn 20:28Rom 9:52Th 1:12Tit 2:13Heb 1:82Pe 1:11Jn 5:20
Jhn 1:18

Whether the original text of John 1:18 read "the only God" (calling the Son God) or "the only Son".

  • majorityThe reading "the only God" is original, on the strength of the earliest and best witnesses, and the shift to "Son" was a scribal simplification.; Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992); Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1994)
  • minorityThe reading "the only Son" is original, and "God" is a later doctrinally motivated alteration.; Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 78-82
Rom 9:5

Whether the closing words of Romans 9:5 call Christ God over all, or form a separate blessing addressed to God the Father.

  • contestedThe words apply to Christ, calling him God over all, which best fits the way the sentence is built.; Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992); C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979)
  • contestedThe words form an independent blessing of God the Father, since Paul nowhere else in his undisputed letters calls Christ God.; Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1994)
Heb 1:8

Whether Hebrews 1:8, quoting Psalm 45, addresses the Son as God or instead says that God is the Son's throne.

  • majorityThe words address the Son directly as God: your throne, O God, is forever.; Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992)
  • minorityThe words can instead be read as a statement, God is your throne, since the Greek of the psalm allows it.; Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989); B. F. Westcott, The Epistle to the Hebrews (London: Macmillan, 1889)

Disputed

How many New Testament passages use this word of Jesus, and how securely.

  • majorityTwo are certain (John 1:1 and John 20:28), four more are very probable (Romans 9:5, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8, 2 Peter 1:1), and John 1:18 is probable; the total is small but real.; Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992); Raymond E. Brown, Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?, Theological Studies 26, no. 4 (1965): 545-573
  • minorityThe total is smaller, because several of the probable passages turn on punctuation or on a disputed manuscript reading and are better taken of the Father.; Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1994); Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
2

a god: any being or power treated as divine, as distinct from the one true God

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This is the older and broader use, and the one an ordinary Greek speaker would have reached for first. In the poets and the tragedies the plural names the whole company of the immortals, and the singular can simply mean a divine being. The New Testament keeps that use alive, mostly on the lips of outsiders or in arguments aimed at them, and it often pairs the word with its term for the image itself (εἴδωλον).

It turns up in four recognizable situations:

  • the carved and cast gods of the nations, which Paul insists are no gods at all
  • living people acclaimed as divine, as when a crowd hails a king's voice or takes a visiting missionary for an immortal
  • whatever actually runs a person's life, which Paul can call their god with cutting irony
  • the beings addressed as gods in the psalm Jesus quotes when he is accused of blasphemy

The Greek word itself passes no verdict. English sorts the two uses for the reader with a capital letter, so that "God" and "god" look like separate words. Greek has only the one, and the reader has to watch the sentence to see who or what is meant.

Nuances

2aa god of the nations: one of the many deities the surrounding world worshiped, including the images made to represent them
Act 7:40Act 7:43Act 17:23Act 19:26Act 19:371Co 8:5 (2×)Gal 4:8
2ba human being taken or acclaimed as divine
Act 12:22Act 14:11Act 28:62Th 2:4
2cwhatever rules a life in God's place: a power or an appetite treated as a god
2Co 4:4Php 3:19
2dthe beings called gods in the psalm Jesus quotes: those to whom God's word came
CertaintyContested
Jhn 10:34Jhn 10:35
Jhn 10:34

Who the gods of Psalm 82:6 are in the psalm Jesus quotes at John 10:34.

  • majorityIsrael at Sinai, the people to whom the word of God came, which is how Jewish interpreters of the period read the psalm and how the argument in John works.; Jerome H. Neyrey, I Said: You Are Gods: Psalm 82:6 and John 10, Journal of Biblical Literature 108 (1989): 647-663; Anthony Hanson, John's Citation of Psalm LXXXII, New Testament Studies 11 (1964-65): 158-162
  • minorityMembers of a heavenly council, real spiritual beings ranked under the God of Israel.; Michael S. Heiser, Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God, Bibliotheca Sacra 158 (2001): 52-74

What scholars say about theos

Standard lexicography treats θεός as one word whose reference runs from the ordinary Greek class-term for a deity to the one God of Israel. BDAG (3rd ed., 450-452) organizes the entry by referent, moving from the general polytheistic sense (pagan deities, Acts 28:6; 1 Cor 8:5; the devil, 2 Cor 4:4) to the one true God, and finally to the application of θεός to exalted beings, including humans (John 10:34f) and Christ; Louw and Nida place the word in Domain 12 (Supernatural Beings and Powers), distinguishing the one true God from a generic deity. The TDNT article is composite: Kleinknecht on secular Greek, where θεοί form an ordered totality of immortals with no personal Creator; Quell on the Old Testament; Stauffer on the New. Comparative philology has settled one negative point: θεός is not cognate with Latin deus but goes back to Proto-Indo-European *dʰéh₁s (Beekes, Chantraine), while deus and Ζεύς derive from *deyw-; the older derivation from θύω is generally rejected. Semantically the biblical usage is anchored in the Septuagint, which renders אֱלֹהִים by θεός and the Tetragrammaton by κύριος; whether the earliest Greek manuscripts already read κύριος or preserved a Hebrew tetragram or ΙΑΩ remains unresolved (Pietersma and Rösel for κύριος, Shaw and others against, Hurtado judging the manuscript evidence indecisive). Philo's distinction between ὁ θεός for the true God and anarthrous θεός applied to the Logos (Somn. 1.229-230; QG 2.62, the δεύτερος θεός) is the closest Jewish parallel to John 1:1. On the christological texts the definitive study is Murray Harris, Jesus as God (1992), rating John 1:1 and 20:28 certain, Rom 9:5, Titus 2:13, Heb 1:8 and 2 Pet 1:1 very probable, John 1:18 probable, and Acts 20:28, Heb 1:9 and 1 John 5:20 possible but unlikely; Raymond Brown's 1965 essay in Theological Studies reaches a comparable tally while stressing that no NT text portrays Jesus saying specifically that he is God. Four grammatical questions dominate: Colwell's rule of 1933 (widely misapplied to prove definiteness), Harner's argument that anarthrous preverbal predicate nouns are primarily qualitative (JBL 92 [1973]: 75-87), the nominative used for direct address (bearing on John 20:28 and Heb 1:8), and the Granville Sharp rule governing Titus 2:13 and 2 Pet 1:1, defended within careful limits by Wallace. The wider dispute, over whether the earliest Christology already included Jesus within the divine identity (Hurtado, Bauckham, Wright, Bird, Gathercole) or developed toward it (Dunn on some points, Casey, McGrath, Ehrman, Fredriksen), frames how each text is weighed, as does the Second-Temple debate over mediator figures and two powers in heaven (Segal, Boyarin, Schäfer, Fletcher-Louis). On John 10:34-36, Neyrey (JBL 108 [1989]: 647-663) and Hanson read Ps 82:6 of Israel at Sinai and argue that Jesus thereby claims more rather than less, Mosser (JTS 56 [2005]: 30-74) traces the psalm's patristic career as the chief proof-text for deification, and Heiser argues for divine-council beings. On Acts 17, Conzelmann and Haenchen read genuine accommodation to Greek natural theology, while Rowe argues that Luke subverts it, so that θεός there remains the Creator God of Israel.

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

  • Bauer, Danker, Arndt, Gingrich (BDAG), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 450-452, s.v. θεόςlexicon
  • Liddell, Scott, Jones (LSJ), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., s.v. θεόςlexicon
  • Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1989), Domain 12lexicon
  • Hermann Kleinknecht, Gottfried Quell, Ethelbert Stauffer et al., θεός, in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 65-123dictionary
  • Horst Balz and Gerhard Schneider, eds., θεός, in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991)dictionary
  • Moisés Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), s.v. θεόςdictionary
  • Robert Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden: Brill, 2010), s.v. θεόςlexicon
  • Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992)monograph
  • Raymond E. Brown, Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?, Theological Studies 26, no. 4 (1965): 545-573article
  • Philip B. Harner, Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1, Journal of Biblical Literature 92 (1973): 75-87article
  • Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996)grammar
  • Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1994)commentary
  • Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008)monograph
  • Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988)monograph
  • Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)monograph
  • Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989)commentary
  • C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979)commentary
  • Jerome H. Neyrey, I Said: You Are Gods: Psalm 82:6 and John 10, Journal of Biblical Literature 108 (1989): 647-663article
  • Carl Mosser, The Earliest Patristic Interpretations of Psalm 82, Jewish Deification Traditions, and Ante-Nicene Exegesis, Journal of Theological Studies 56, no. 1 (2005): 30-74article
  • Martin Rösel, The Reading and Translation of the Divine Name in the Masoretic Tradition and the Greek Pentateuch, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 31, no. 4 (2007): 411-428article

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

All attested forms of θεός

genitive m s

θεοῦ

Mat 3:16, Mat 4:3, Mat 4:4, Mat 4:6, Mat 5:9, Mat 5:34, Mat 6:33, Mat 8:29

nominative m s

θεὸς, θεός

Mat 3:9, Mat 6:8, Mat 6:30, Mat 15:4, Mat 19:6, Mat 22:32, Mat 22:32, Mat 22:32

dative m s

θεῷ

Mat 6:24, Mat 19:26, Mat 22:21, Mrk 10:27, Mrk 10:27, Mrk 12:17, Luk 1:30, Luk 1:47

accusative m s

θεὸν, θεόν, Θεὸν

Mat 5:8, Mat 9:8, Mat 15:31, Mrk 2:12, Luk 1:16, Luk 2:13, Luk 2:20, Luk 2:28

vocative m s

θεός, θεὸς, θεέ

Mrk 15:34, Mrk 15:34, Luk 18:11, Luk 18:13, Jhn 20:28, Heb 1:8, Heb 10:7, Rev 4:11

nominative m p

θεοὶ, θεοί

Act 14:11, Act 19:26, 1Co 8:5, 1Co 8:5, Jhn 10:34

accusative m p

θεοὺς

Jhn 10:35, Act 7:40

accusative f s

θεὸν

Act 19:37

dative m p

θεοῖς

Gal 4:8