StrongerBible

sunanakeimai

συνανάκειμαι

GreekG4873guests, sat at table with, ...

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Mat 9:10Mat 14:9Mrk 2:15Mrk 6:22Luk 7:49Luk 14:10Luk 14:15
Compound of
Word studysoon-ah-NAH-kay-myverb

What sunanakeimai means

to share a table with someone: to be reclining at the same meal, and so to be counted as part of that person's company

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

At a formal meal in the Greek and Roman world, guests did not sit on chairs. They lay on their sides on low couches drawn up around the table, propped on one elbow with the free hand for the food. This word takes the ordinary verb for that posture, ἀνάκειμαι, and puts "with" on the front of it. So it means to be stretched out on those couches alongside someone else, which in plain terms is to be at the same meal as that person.

The small word "with" is what carries the weight. A meal in that world sorted people, and the company on the couches announced who counted as your equals. When Matthew and Mark report that tax collectors and outsiders were at table with Jesus, they are not describing furniture. They are saying that these people were being reckoned as his company, and that is precisely what scandalized the onlookers.

The two shades of the word are one scene viewed from two sides. As a plain verb it reports that certain people joined a host at his table. Used as a name for a group, it turns that same fact into an identity: "the ones at table with him," the guests whose good opinion Herod could not afford to lose, the diners who muttered about a woman being forgiven. That is why one Greek verb comes into English sometimes as an action and sometimes as a noun.

It belongs to a small family of verbs for the same posture, and the difference is who they have in view. Both ἀνάκειμαι and the older κατάκειμαι simply describe someone lying at table and say nothing about company, while συνεσθίω names the act of eating with a person rather than the shared couch.

Nuances

1ato be at table with a particular person, sharing the same meal
Mat 9:10Mrk 2:15
1bthe other people at the table: someone's fellow guests
Mat 14:9Mrk 6:22Luk 7:49Luk 14:10Luk 14:15

What scholars say about sunanakeimai

The lexica treat συνανάκειμαι as the σύν- compound of ἀνάκειμαι and gloss it "recline at table with, eat with," noting that the substantivized participle οἱ συνανακείμενοι serves as an ordinary designation for the fellow guests (BDAG, s.v.). Louw and Nida are the instructive outlier in classification: instead of placing the compound with the posture verbs of domain 17 ("Recline [to eat]"), where ἀνάκειμαι, κατάκειμαι, ἀνακλίνω, κατακλίνω and ἀναπίπτω cluster as largely co-referential, they assign συνανάκειμαι to domain 34 ("Association"), glossing it "to be associated with others in eating," on the ground that the compound foregrounds commensality rather than posture. Commentators on the table-fellowship pericopae read the substantive at Matthew 9:10 and Mark 2:15 in exactly that social key: Davies and Allison stress the durative solidarity of the reclining meal, Luz reads the scene as a symposium-style Tischgemeinschaft in which reclining presupposes shared standing, and Marcus notes that identifying Jesus' couch-mates as tax collectors and sinners is itself the accusation. The convention presupposed throughout, the Hellenistic reclining banquet and its honor-graded placement, is documented for the New Testament period by Dennis E. Smith and applied to the Gospel meal scenes by S. Scott Bartchy.

Sources

  • BDAG, s.v. συνανάκειμαιlexicon
  • Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 34.20lexicon
  • LSJ, s.v. ἀνάκειμαιlexicon
  • W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC), vol. 2commentary
  • Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8-20 (Hermeneia)commentary
  • Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8 (Anchor Yale Bible)commentary
  • Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian Worldmonograph
  • S. Scott Bartchy, "Table Fellowship," in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospelsdictionary

All attested forms of συνανάκειμαι

imperfect middle-or-passive indicative 3p

συνανέκειντο

Mat 9:10, Mrk 2:15

present middle-or-passive participle genitive m p

συνανακειμένων

Luk 14:10, Luk 14:15

present middle-or-passive participle accusative m p

συνανακειμένους

Mat 14:9

present middle-or-passive participle dative m p

συνανακειμένοις

Mrk 6:22

present middle-or-passive participle nominative m p

συνανακείμενοι

Luk 7:49