StrongerBible

mimeomai

μιμέομαι

GreekG3401“imitate, follow the example of”

Appears 4 times · tap a cell to see the verses

2Th 3:72Th 3:9Heb 13:73Jn 1:11
Root family
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-grademee-MEH-oh-myverb

What mimeomai means

to imitate: to take a person or example as a model and reproduce it in one's own conduct

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This verb comes from the world of the theater, where a mime was an actor who acted out a character. From that root it came to mean copying a model on purpose, and by the New Testament period it named the way a student learned from a teacher, or a person of character learned from a hero worth admiring. It is never a passive word: it is the deliberate work of watching a life and reproducing it.

In the New Testament the verb always calls for real effort, and what is imitated shifts with the situation:

  • Paul points to his own refusal of special treatment and his hard, unpaid work, offering himself on purpose as a pattern the church can copy.
  • The letter to the Hebrews tells its readers to imitate the faith of their leaders, looking at how their lives turned out.
  • The short letter of 3 John widens the object from a person to a quality: imitate what is good, not what is evil.

What holds these together is a single idea: a model is set before you, and you reproduce it in how you live. The related noun μιμητής names the person who does this, an "imitator." The Hebrew Scriptures had no verb quite like it and spoke instead of walking in someone's ways (הלך); this Greek word gave the early church a sharper way to say "pattern your life on this."

Nuances

1ato follow a person's life and conduct as the pattern for your own
2Th 3:72Th 3:9Heb 13:7
1bto pattern your conduct on what is good rather than what is evil
3Jn 1:11

Disputed

Whether this imitation language calls for the concrete emulation of a person's conduct or is close to a demand for obedience to authoritative teaching.

  • majorityIt calls for reproducing a real, observable pattern of life, in line with the way teachers and heroes were held up as living examples in the wider Greek and Roman world.; Willis P. De Boer, The Imitation of Paul: An Exegetical Study (Kampen: Kok, 1962); Benjamin Fiore, The Function of Personal Example in the Socratic and Pastoral Epistles (AnBib 105; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1986); Andrew D. Clarke, 'Be Imitators of Me: Paul's Model of Leadership,' Tyndale Bulletin 49.2 (1998): 329-60
  • minorityThe word group is functionally close to obedience, so that being told to imitate is being told to obey apostolic teaching rather than to copy specific conduct.; Wilhelm Michaelis, 'mimeomai, mimetes, symmimetes,' in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 659-74

What scholars say about mimeomai

The lexicons are consistent on the dictionary sense: BDAG glosses mimeomai "use as a model, imitate, emulate, follow"; LSJ traces the classical range from the theatrical mimos (imitate, represent, impersonate); Louw-Nida places it in domain 41.43, "to behave in the same manner as someone else." The word group is largely absent from the Hebrew-based Septuagint but surfaces in Hellenized Jewish texts (Wisdom 4:2; 4 Maccabees 9:23, with its first-person "imitate me, brothers"), and its imperial-period home is the world of paideia and popular moral philosophy, where the student imitates the master and the sage imitates God (Fiore; Malherbe). The verb itself (as opposed to the noun mimetes) occurs only four times in the New Testament: 2 Thessalonians 3:7, 9, where Paul makes his own manual labor and refusal of support a typos to be copied; Hebrews 13:7, imitating the faith of deceased leaders in light of the "outcome" of their conduct; and 3 John 11, whose abstract object (good versus evil) is unique in the New Testament. The mid-century paradigm was Wilhelm Michaelis's TDNT article, which reduced the language to obedience; it has been dismantled by De Boer (1962), Stanley (1959), Fiore (1986), and Clarke (1998), and modern lexicography (BDAG, NIDNTTE) follows the critics, while retaining Michaelis's kernel that imitation is tied to specific, teachable content. Elizabeth Castelli's Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (1991) reread the language through Foucault as a strategy of authority; critics (Mitchell 1992; Thiselton 1995; Clarke; Copan) note that Paul also praises imitation that arose spontaneously and that her frame is totalizing. The current center of gravity, associated with Gorman's cruciformity theme, Hays, Fowl, and Eastman, treats imitation as Spirit-enabled, cross-shaped participation in Christ mediated through concrete human examples, rather than either shallow mimicry or domination.

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

  • BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. mimeomailexicon
  • Liddell-Scott-Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. mimeomailexicon
  • Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 41.43lexicon
  • Wilhelm Michaelis, 'mimeomai ktl.,' in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 659-74theological-dictionary
  • Moises Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), s.v. mimeomaitheological-dictionary
  • Willis P. De Boer, The Imitation of Paul: An Exegetical Study (Kampen: Kok, 1962)monograph
  • Benjamin Fiore, The Function of Personal Example in the Socratic and Pastoral Epistles (AnBib 105; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1986)monograph
  • Andrew D. Clarke, 'Be Imitators of Me: Paul's Model of Leadership,' Tyndale Bulletin 49.2 (1998): 329-60article
  • Elizabeth A. Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991)monograph
  • Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001)monograph
  • Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians, Anchor Bible 32B (New York: Doubleday, 2000)commentary

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

All attested forms of μιμέομαι

present middle-or-passive infinitive

μιμεῖσθαι

2Th 3:7, 2Th 3:9

present middle-or-passive imperative 2p

μιμεῖσθε

Heb 13:7

present middle-or-passive imperative 2s

μιμοῦ

3Jn 1:11