StrongerBible

mimētēs

μιμητής

GreekG3402“imitator, follower”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

1Co 4:161Co 11:1Eph 5:11Th 1:61Th 2:14Heb 6:12
Root family
Word studyResearch-grademee-may-TACEnoun

What mimētēs means

an imitator: a person who takes another's life as a pattern and reproduces it in their own conduct

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

In the New Testament this word never means shallow copying. It names a person who has watched a real life up close and begun to live the same way, taking on another's whole pattern of conduct as their own. Ancient teachers assumed that character is caught as much as it is taught, so a student was expected to reproduce a worthy example, not just absorb a lesson. When Paul writes "be imitators of me" (First Corinthians 4:16), his readers would have heard a familiar call to be formed by an example, not a demand for mimicry. The matching verb, to imitate (μιμέομαι), works the same way.

What makes the word distinctly Christian is the pattern being copied and where the chain of imitation leads. Paul adds "as I also am of Christ" (First Corinthians 11:1), so he never offers himself as a self-made authority; he is worth imitating only because he is himself reproducing the self-giving of Christ. The shape handed down is consistently the cross: a life spent for others rather than seized for oneself. Paul even coined a word for doing this together, fellow-imitators (συμμιμητής), because the copying was meant to be shared across a whole community, not practiced alone.

The one held up as the pattern varies from passage to passage, but the movement is always the same, from a life already visible to its reproduction in others:

  • believers imitate faithful leaders who are themselves following Christ (First Corinthians 4:16; First Thessalonians 1:6)
  • they imitate God directly, the way beloved children take after a parent (Ephesians 5:1)
  • they imitate whole communities that welcomed the message and bore suffering for it (First Thessalonians 2:14; Hebrews 6:12)
1Co 4:161Co 11:1Eph 5:11Th 1:61Th 2:14Heb 6:12

Disputed

Whether the word denotes actually copying a person's way of life, or simply obeying apostolic authority and its teaching.

  • majorityIt calls for the concrete reproduction of a way of life, above all the self-giving pattern of the cross embodied in Paul and, through him, in Christ.; Willis P. De Boer, The Imitation of Paul: An Exegetical Study (Kok, 1962); Benjamin Fiore, The Function of Personal Example in the Socratic and Pastoral Epistles (Biblical Institute Press, 1986)
  • minorityIt means chiefly obedience to apostolic authority and acceptance of its teaching, not the emulation of a moral example.; Wilhelm Michaelis, 'mimeomai, mimetes, symmimetes,' Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 4 (Eerdmans, 1967): 659-74

What scholars say about mimētēs

The lexical core is stable: NIDNTTE (Silva), EDNT (Larsson), and NIDNTT (Bauder) all define the noun as the emulation of a concrete model, following Willis De Boer's verse-by-verse refutation (1962) of Wilhelm Michaelis's TDNT proposal that the word meant obedience to apostolic authority rather than ethical example. Benjamin Fiore documented the exemplary-model convention across Hellenistic moral literature, removing the linguistic basis for Michaelis's reading. Commentators including Thiselton, Fee, Hays, O'Brien, Bockmuehl, and Wanamaker read the "as I am of Christ" clause of 1 Corinthians 11:1 as making Christ the norm and Paul only a transparent, derivative model. Elizabeth Castelli's Imitating Paul (1991) applied Foucault to argue that the rhetoric functions as an instrument of power and enforced sameness whatever Paul intended; Andrew Clarke, Thiselton, and Michael Gorman reply that the cross-shaped content Paul demands subverts rather than consolidates authority. The word group is rare in the Septuagint (Wisdom of Solomon 4:2 and 15:9) and bends toward martyrdom in 4 Maccabees, a trajectory the Apostolic Fathers, above all Ignatius of Antioch, later intensified.

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

  • Moisés Silva (ed.), New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, vol. 3 (Zondervan, 2014)lexicon
  • Edvin Larsson, 'mimeomai, mimetes,' Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 2 (Eerdmans, 1991): 428-29lexicon
  • Willis P. De Boer, The Imitation of Paul: An Exegetical Study (Kok, 1962)monograph
  • Benjamin Fiore, The Function of Personal Example in the Socratic and Pastoral Epistles (Biblical Institute Press, 1986)monograph
  • Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 2000)commentary
  • Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Eerdmans, rev. 2014)commentary
  • Elizabeth A. Castelli, Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (Westminster/John Knox, 1991)monograph
  • Wilhelm Michaelis, 'mimeomai, mimetes, symmimetes,' Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 4 (Eerdmans, 1967): 659-74lexicon

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

All attested forms of μιμητής

nominative m p

μιμηταὶ, μιμηταί, Μιμηταί

Eph 5:1, 1Th 1:6, 1Th 2:14, Heb 6:12, 1Co 4:16, 1Co 11:1