a tomb: the place where a dead body is laid to rest
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
The word is built from the idea of remembrance. At root it names a "place of remembering," a marker that keeps a dead person in mind. Across the New Testament it settles firmly on one thing: the tomb, the spot where a body is laid.
Most tombs in the Gospels are chambers cut into rock and closed with a stone. This is the tomb of Jesus, the tomb of Lazarus, the tomb where the body of John the Baptist was laid. The demon-troubled men of the Gerasene region live out among such tombs, away from town. When the women come at dawn and find the stone rolled back and the tomb empty, this is the word for what they came to.
A few times the word points instead to the tomb as a public monument, a structure built and decorated in a dead person's honor. When Jesus rebukes the leaders for building and adorning the tombs of the prophets, the memorial sense already sitting inside the word comes to the surface: they lavish fine tombs on prophets long dead while rejecting the living ones. The two shades are one idea seen from two angles, the grave that holds a body and the monument that honors it.
Nuances
1aa burial place where a body is laid: a rock-cut tomb, a cave, or a grave
Names the tomb as a remembrance, a marked monument that keeps the dead person in mind; this is the standard word in the empty-tomb accounts, the cut-rock chamber sealed and then found open.Jhn 19:41Mrk 16:2Jhn 20:1
Can name a tomb that is occupied by the living, the place where a tormented man lived among the dead, showing the word points to the structure itself rather than only the burial.Mat 8:28Mrk 5:2
Both
Both name the burial place of the dead, and the Gospels can set them side by side for the very same monuments, here the tombs the religious leaders decorated.Mat 23:29
Carries the act of burying and so reaches into figurative speech: a hypocrite as a tomb that looks clean outside but is full of decay within, and the throat as an opened grave.Mat 23:27Rom 3:13
Used for the guarded and sealed tomb of Jesus as a secured burial site, the place officials watched to keep the body in.Mat 27:64Mat 27:66
μνῆμαa near-twin from the same root for remembrance, also meaning tomb or grave, differing mainly in form rather than sense
Leans toward the visible, built memorial that people construct and decorate, the kind of monument the religious leaders raised over the prophets.Mat 23:29Luk 11:47
The constructed, enterable tomb with a stone across its mouth, the rock-cut chamber people step into, stoop to look inside, and roll a stone over.Mat 27:60Jhn 11:38Jhn 20:1
Carries the sense of a grave that can be marked or unmarked on the surface, so a hidden one becomes a trap for those who walk over it unaware.Luk 11:44
Both
Both name the actual place where a dead body is laid to rest, including the very tomb in which Jesus was buried.Luk 23:53Jhn 19:41
Names a known, settled burial place treated as a landmark, the resting spot that everyone can point to: David's tomb that is still among the people, and the family plot Abraham bought.Act 2:29Act 7:16
Used for tombs as a place where someone actually lives and roams, the burial caves a tormented man made his home day and night.Mrk 5:3Mrk 5:5Luk 8:27
Names a rock-cut tomb closed with a stone that can be rolled away, the chamber type at the center of the burial and resurrection accounts.Mat 27:60Mrk 16:3Jhn 11:38Jhn 20:1
Built on the idea of remembrance: a monument that keeps a person in memory, the showy tombs the religious leaders decorate and whitewash.Mat 23:29Luk 11:47Luk 11:48
Both
Both name the resting place where a corpse is laid, the tomb a person is buried in. The Greek word of the New Testament names the same kind of burial site the Hebrew word names across the Old.Gen 50:5Jdg 16:31Mat 27:60Jhn 19:41
Names the family burial holding secured as property, the ancestral cave or plot a household buys and is gathered into.Gen 23:4Gen 23:9Gen 49:30
Figures in the dread of dishonor: to be left without a grave, or dragged from one, is a curse, so the word carries the weight of proper burial.2Ki 23:16Isa 14:19Jer 8:1
What scholars say about mnēmeion
Standard lexica treat μνημεῖον under two closely linked headings: a monument or memorial erected for the dead, and, more commonly in the New Testament, the grave or tomb itself (BDAG; LSJ). The noun is a place-formation from the μνάομαι / μιμνῄσκομαι word group ("to remember"), and it stands beside the cognate μνῆμα, with which it is largely interchangeable, and beside τάφος (from θάπτω, "to bury"). O. Michel's TDNT treatment of the μνῆμα / μνημεῖον group notes that the memorial nuance is etymologically primary but that in the Gospels the word is chiefly the concrete burial chamber, typically a rock-cut tomb sealed with a stone, which is why it dominates the resurrection narratives.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. μνημεῖονlexicon
LSJ, s.v. μνημεῖονlexicon
O. Michel, "μνῆμα, μνημεῖον," TDNT 4:679-680theological-dictionary