StrongerBible

stasis

στάσις

GreekG4714“riot, dissension, ...”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mrk 15:7Luk 23:19Luk 23:25Act 15:2Act 19:40Act 23:7Act 23:10Act 24:5Heb 9:8
Names & words formed with this
Word studySTAH-seesnoun

What stasis means

1

a public break into opposing camps: people who belonged together now standing against each other, anywhere from a furious argument to an armed revolt.

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

This noun comes from the ordinary verb for standing, and the picture behind it is a group that has stopped standing together. Two sides now stand apart, facing each other. That one image covers everything the word does in the New Testament, whether the standoff is a shouting match or a street fight.

The range is wide, and the same word carries all of it:

  • an armed revolt in Jerusalem that left people dead and Barabbas in prison
  • a furious argument at Antioch over whether Gentile believers had to be circumcised
  • a council session that broke apart so badly that soldiers had to pull Paul out by force

What holds these together is not how much blood was shed but the shape of the trouble: people who made up one body have divided into parties. In the Roman world the line between an argument and a riot was thin, and officials treated it that way. A crowd that split into camps was already a threat to public order, which is why the town clerk at Ephesus warns that the city could be charged over the day's uproar, and why the lawyer Tertullus accuses Paul of stirring up trouble of this kind among Jewish communities everywhere.

Two nearby words mark the edges of this one. The word for an uproar (θόρυβος) points at the noise and confusion of an excited crowd; the word for a tear (σχίσμα) points at the split left behind in a group. This word names the standoff itself, the moment two sides square off.

Nuances

1aan uprising against the ruling power: a revolt or riot serious enough for the authorities to treat it as a crime.
TranslatabilityDirect
Mrk 15:7Luk 23:19Luk 23:25Act 19:40Act 24:5
1ba sharp falling out inside a group that splits it into opposed parties.
TranslatabilityApproximate
Act 15:2Act 23:7Act 23:10
2

a standing: the state of being set up and still in place.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Hebrews uses the plain, older sense of the noun: simply standing, being set up and in place. The writer says that the first tent still has its standing, meaning the earlier arrangement is still up and running and the way into the holy place has not yet been opened.

Interpreters differ over what that comes to in practice, whether the tent is still physically pitched or whether the old system still holds good, and over which tent is meant. Either way the noun itself names a settled state of being in place, not an event.

The link to the word's other meaning is not an accident. Both start from standing: one from something standing firm where it was set, the other from people standing apart from one another. Only the surrounding words tell a reader which is meant, and here nothing about revolt is in view.

Heb 9:8

What scholars say about stasis

The lexicons divide this noun into a concrete branch and a political one. BDAG gives three headings: a standing or existence, which is where it places Hebrews 9:8; an uprising, riot, or revolt; and strife or discord (BDAG, s.v. στάσις). LSJ documents the same spread across classical and Hellenistic usage, from a standing or station, through party and faction, to civil strife, the sense that dominates Greek political writing about internal conflict inside a city (LSJ, s.v. στάσις). The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament treats the noun within the ἵστημι word group and stresses the continuity between standing and standing apart in factions; EDNT likewise keeps the riot sense and the discord sense separate (EDNT, s.v. στάσις). On Hebrews 9:8 the commentators take στάσιν ἐχούσης of the first tent as its having standing, that is, remaining in place or in force, while differing over whether ἡ πρώτη σκηνή is the outer compartment of the sanctuary or the earlier tabernacle arrangement as a whole (Attridge, Hebrews, Hermeneia; Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NIGTC). On Acts, commentators note that στάσις in 23:7 and 23:10 describes a division inside the Sanhedrin that escalates toward physical danger, and that the term in 19:40 and 24:5 belongs to the vocabulary of public order and formal accusation (Barrett, The Acts of the Apostles, ICC).

Sources

  • BDAG, s.v. στάσιςlexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. στάσιςlexicon
  • Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, s.v. ἵστημι κτλ.theological-dictionary
  • Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, s.v. στάσιςtheological-dictionary
  • Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress), on 9:8commentary
  • Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), on 9:8commentary
  • C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark), on 19:40 and 23:7-10commentary

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

All attested forms of στάσις

accusative f s

στάσιν

Luk 23:19, Luk 23:25, Heb 9:8

genitive f s

στάσεως

Act 15:2, Act 19:40, Act 23:10

accusative f p

στάσεις

Act 24:5

dative f s

στάσει

Mrk 15:7

nominative f s

στάσις

Act 23:7