StrongerBible

iama

ἴαμα

GreekG2386“healing, cure”

Appears 3 times · tap a cell to see the verses

1Co 12:91Co 12:281Co 12:30
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeEE-ah-mahnoun

What iama means

a healing: a cure or act of being made well

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This word names healing as something that happens: a cure, the restoring of a sick or broken body to health. In the New Testament it shows up only three times, and always in the same phrase, which Paul writes in the plural twice over: "gifts of healings."

That odd doubled plural is doing deliberate work. Paul is not describing a person who holds a permanent power to heal anyone of anything. He is describing many separate acts of healing, each one a fresh gift handed out by the one Spirit as God chooses. There are no standing "healers" in his picture, only graced moments of healing. Nearly every major commentator reads the plural this way, whatever they conclude about whether such gifts still operate today.

The word also carried a loaded echo for Paul's first readers in Corinth. Across town stood a famous temple of the healing god Asclepius, packed with clay models of the body parts people believed the god had cured. The very word for those advertised temple cures was this one, healings. So when Paul says the true healings come as gifts of God's Spirit, a Corinthian could hardly miss the contrast, even though Paul never names the rival god. Behind the word also lies the Old Testament conviction, carried in the Greek translation Paul knew, that genuine healing comes from God alone.

1Co 12:91Co 12:281Co 12:30

What scholars say about iama

ἴαμα is a post-Homeric noun in -μα built on the verb ἰάομαι; classically it denotes the result or means of healing (the cure or remedy), as against the -σις action-noun ἴασις. Standard grammars (Schwyzer-Debrunner; BDF §109) describe this -σις/-μα contrast, but every major lexicon notes its substantial erosion in Koine: Louw-Nida files ἴαμα and ἴασις together (§23.136), LSJ glosses ἴαμα at 1 Cor 12:9 as = ἴασις, and Oepke (TDNT III, 194-215) judges the two functionally interchangeable, with only a residual nuance toward the concrete cure. In classical and Hellenistic Greek the plural ἰάματα became the technical heading of inscribed miracle-cures at Asclepieia, above all the Epidaurian stelae (IG IV2 1, nos. 121-124), a documentary genre whose nearest formal echo in the NT is Paul's plural ἰαμάτων; Corinth itself had a functioning Asclepieion with hundreds of anatomical votives (Roebuck, Corinth XIV; Lang, Cure and Cult in Ancient Corinth). In the LXX ἴαμα renders chiefly מַרְפֵּא in contexts where God is the healer (2 Chr 36:16; Jer 33:6; Sir 38). On the Corinthian phrase the commentators converge: the marked double plural of χαρίσματα ἰαμάτων denies any standing healer-office and affirms discrete Spirit-given healing-events (Fee, NICNT; Thiselton, NIGTC, following MacGorman; Schrage, EKK; Garland, BECNT; Fitzmyer, AYB; Conzelmann, Hermeneia). Dunn (Jesus and the Spirit) cautions against restricting the gift to physical illness.

Where scholars disagree about iama

Whether Paul's choice of this loaded healing-word in 1 Corinthians 12 deliberately echoes, and counters, the famous miracle-cures of the healing god Asclepius, whose temple stood in Corinth.

  • minorityA deliberate polemical echo: the genuine healings flow from the Holy Spirit through the church, not from Asclepius's shrine.; H. C. Kee, Medicine, Miracle and Magic in New Testament Times, SNTSMS 55 (CUP, 1986), 78-104; W. Cotter, Miracles in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Routledge, 1999)
  • minorityShared healing vocabulary and a common Mediterranean form, but no specifically anti-Asclepian polemic intended.; G. Theissen, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition (T&T Clark, 1983); C. Forbes, Prophecy and Inspired Speech, WUNT 2.75 (Mohr Siebeck, 1995)
  • majorityCautious mediation, the dominant commentary view: Paul uses ordinary healing vocabulary that would inevitably have resonated against the Asclepian backdrop in Corinth, even without naming the god.; A. C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (Eerdmans, 2000), 947-48; G. D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Eerdmans, 1987), 593-94; W. Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, EKK VII/3 (Neukirchener, 1999), 148-60
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

  • A. Oepke, "ἰάομαι, ἴασις, ἴαμα, ἰατρός," TDNT III (Eerdmans, 1965), 194-215lexicon
  • BDAG, 3rd ed. (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. ἴαμα, 465lexicon
  • Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (UBS, 1989), §23.136lexicon
  • LSJ, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. with Rev. Suppl. (Clarendon, 1996), s.v. ἴαμαlexicon
  • G. D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Eerdmans, 1987), 593-94commentary
  • A. C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (Eerdmans, 2000), 947-48commentary
  • W. Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, EKK VII/3 (Neukirchener, 1999), 148-60commentary
  • D. E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, BECNT (Baker, 2003), 575-85commentary
  • H. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1975), 209-12commentary
  • L. R. LiDonnici, The Epidaurian Miracle Inscriptions, SBL TT 36 (Scholars Press, 1995)monograph
  • J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit (SCM, 1975), 209-12monograph

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

All attested forms of ἴαμα

genitive n p

ἰαμάτων

1Co 12:9, 1Co 12:28, 1Co 12:30