StrongerBible

poiētēs

ποιητής

GreekG4163doer

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Act 17:28Rom 2:13Jas 1:22Jas 1:23Jas 1:25Jas 4:11
Root family
Word studypoy-ay-TACEnoun

What poiētēs means

1

a doer: the person who actually carries out what has been said to them, whether a message heard or a law given, instead of only taking it in

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Greek builds this noun on the ordinary verb "to do" or "to make" (ποιέω), and the ending names the person who performs the action. Everyday Greek used it for a maker, and most often for a maker of verse. Jewish writers working in Greek pulled it in a different direction: the person who carries out what God has said. That is the sense the New Testament almost always wants.

It never floats free. Something is always being done: the message, the deed, the law. And it almost always arrives paired with its opposite, the hearer (ἀκροατής). Romans 2:13 says the hearers of the law are not the ones God counts as righteous, the doers are. James 1:22 tells his readers to become doers of the message and not hearers only, then spends the next few sentences on a man who glances in a mirror and walks away having forgotten what he looks like.

James 4:11 swaps the pairing. There the contrast is not doer against hearer but doer against judge (κριτής): a person who runs down a fellow believer has quietly climbed above the law and started ruling on it rather than keeping it. The point holds either way. The law is something you carry out, not something you sit over or merely listen to.

The choice of a person-word matters. Greek could just as easily have used the verb and said "you did what the law says." Naming a kind of person instead turns it into a description of character, what someone habitually is, rather than a record of something they once managed.

Rom 2:13Jas 1:22Jas 1:23Jas 1:25Jas 4:11
2

a poet: a person who composes verse

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This is what the word normally meant in Greek outside the Bible. Someone who made things out of words was simply called a maker, and over time the label settled on writers of verse. English inherited the same idea directly: our word "poet" comes from this one.

The New Testament uses it this way once. Speaking in Athens, Paul argues that God is not far from anyone, and supports it with a line his audience already knew: "as some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring." The line comes from Greek verse written about Zeus, and Paul turns it toward the God he is preaching. That is Acts 17:28.

In English "doer" and "poet" look like two unrelated words, and a translator has to pick one or the other. In Greek they are one idea seen from two sides: the person who makes something real. In Athens what gets made is verse; in James and Romans it is obedience.

Act 17:28

What scholars say about poiētēs

ποιητής is an agent noun in -τής formed on ποιέω, denoting the person who performs the verbal action, alongside ποίημα (the product, in -μα) and ποίησις (the act, in -σις). In classical and Hellenistic Greek its dominant reference is the maker or author, and from the fifth century BC it is used absolutely of the composer of verse (Herodotus; Plato; Aristotle, Poetics), a usage still standard in the first century. BDAG accordingly divides the New Testament evidence into (1) one who does something, a doer, and (2) a maker of poetry, a poet; LSJ and Louw-Nida agree, the latter placing the two in separate semantic domains. The "doer" sense is a development within Jewish Greek: the Septuagint and related literature use the noun with a genitive naming the norm carried out (1 Maccabees 2:67, ποιηταὶ τοῦ νόμου; compare Sirach 19:20), reproducing the Hebrew idiom that expresses the same thing verbally with עשׂה plus an object such as דָּבָר or תּוֹרָה. Five of the six New Testament occurrences take that construction (ποιητὴς λόγου, ποιητὴς ἔργου, ποιητὴς / ποιηταὶ νόμου). Romans 2:13, οἱ ποιηταὶ τοῦ νόμου δικαιωθήσονται, is heavily discussed (Cranfield, Dunn, Moo, Schreiner, Fitzmyer, Jewett), but the debate concerns whether Paul speaks hypothetically, of Gentile Christians, or of a final judgment according to works; the lexical sense of the noun is not itself at issue. In James the hearer/doer antithesis of 1:22-25 is regularly read against Jewish moral exhortation and rabbinic parallels (Dibelius, Davids, Johnson, Allison), with ποιητὴς ἔργου at 1:25 an unusual collocation taken either as "a doer characterized by action" or as "a doer of the work the law prescribes." At Acts 17:28 the quoted τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν is from Aratus, Phaenomena 5, with a closely similar line in Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus; the plural ποιητῶν has traditionally been taken to include Epimenides for the preceding clause, an attribution resting on later sources and treated cautiously in the critical commentaries (Barrett, Keener).

Sources

  • BDAG (Danker et al.), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., s.v. ποιητήςlexicon
  • Liddell, Scott, Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., s.v. ποιητήςlexicon
  • Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, s.v. ποιητήςlexicon
  • H. Braun, "ποιέω κτλ.," TDNT 6:458-484theological-dictionary
  • C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. 1 (ICC), on 2:13commentary
  • Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 2nd ed. (NICNT), on 2:12-16commentary
  • Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, 2nd ed. (BECNT), on 2:13commentary
  • Martin Dibelius, James (Hermeneia), on 1:22-25commentary
  • Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James (NIGTC), on 1:22-25commentary
  • Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James (Anchor Bible 37A), on 1:22-25commentary
  • Dale C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of James (ICC), on 1:22-25commentary
  • C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, vol. 2 (ICC), on 17:28commentary
  • Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, vol. 3, on 17:28commentary

All attested forms of ποιητής

nominative m s

ποιητὴς, ποιητής

Jas 1:25, Jas 4:11, Jas 1:23

nominative m p

ποιηταὶ

Rom 2:13, Jas 1:22

genitive m p

ποιητῶν

Act 17:28