insulting, humiliating mistreatment of a person: treatment deliberately meant to shame and degrade
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
In the everyday Greek of the New Testament era, this word named a concrete social wrong: treating another person in a way calculated to shame and degrade them. It ranges from purely verbal contempt to public humiliation to physical assault, and what ties those together is the intent behind them, the drive to dishonor someone for the satisfaction of coming out on top.
Paul uses it this way when he lists the outrages he has borne for Christ. He is not describing an inner mood but real, humiliating treatment at the hands of others. Whether a given instance was a beating or a verbal shaming is debated, but either way it belongs to the world of honor and public disgrace, not to a state of mind.
2Co 12:10*
2Co 12:10
Whether the outrages Paul lists here were physical assaults (beatings, injuries) or verbal insults and public abuse.
contestedConcrete physical outrages: wounds and bodily injuries suffered in the course of ministry.; Margaret E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (ICC); Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians (Word Biblical Commentary)
contestedVerbal insults and public abuse rather than bodily harm.; Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians (Anchor Bible); Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC)
2
the violent harm a storm inflicts: the battering damage of wind and sea on a ship
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
Greek writers could turn this word for violent outrage on the natural world, picturing a storm as if it were assaulting a ship. That is how it works in the account of Paul's sea voyage, where it names the battering harm the wind and waves inflict.
There is no moral weight here. Whether the writer means it with a touch of poetry, the sea's wild violence, or simply as plain sailors' talk for damage, is a question of style. The plain sense is the harm a storm does.
Act 27:10Act 27:21
Disputed
Whether the writer uses the word here in a heightened, near-poetic sense (the wanton violence of the storm against the ship) or as flat, ordinary sailing vocabulary for damage.
contestedA deliberate literary flourish that keeps the classical color of violent outrage, now turned on the ship by the sea.; C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (ICC); Richard I. Pervo, Acts (Hermeneia)
contestedPlain nautical terminology for damage and loss, with no moral or poetic weight.; F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles: Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary; Darrell L. Bock, Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)
Names the outrage or insult itself, the act of insolent mistreatment that one person inflicts on another.2Co 12:10
Widens to the concrete injury, damage, and loss that such violence produces, as when Paul warns the sea voyage will end in "hurt and much damage" to cargo, ship, and lives.Act 27:10Act 27:21
Both
Both carry the sense of aggressive, insolent contempt that spills over into harm done to others, not a quiet inner pride: one is the deed, the other the doer.2Co 12:101Ti 1:13
Names the PERSON who commits the outrage, the insolent and violent aggressor, and appears in vice-lists cataloguing the wicked.Rom 1:301Ti 1:13
hubris in the other biblical languages
חֶרְפָּהHebrew“reproach”the Hebrew word for reproach and public disgrace, the shame heaped on a person, which overlaps with this word's sense of humiliating mistreatment
Names reproach as a settled state of disgrace or lost honor, which can attach to a person through circumstance rather than anyone's active insult, such as barrenness, widowhood, or national shame.Gen 30:23Isa 54:4Jos 5:9
זָדוֹןHebrew“arrogance”the Hebrew word for insolent presumption that the Greek Old Testament often rendered with this word, closer to arrogant defiance than to the concrete mistreatment the New Testament stresses
In the New Testament this word lands on concrete harm suffered: the physical damage, injury, and loss that fall on people and property, not an inner attitude anyone holds. The Hebrew word never means injury of this kind.Act 27:10Act 27:21
Both
Both belong to the world of insolent arrogance shown toward others: the overweening contempt that scorns and outrages people. The Hebrew names that haughty pride directly, and the Greek word names the insult and abuse such arrogance inflicts, which is why the Greek term is the natural rendering for this Hebrew word's arrogant edge.Isa 16:62Co 12:10
It reaches high in a purely positive direction, naming majesty and exalted grandeur, often God's own, a loftiness that carries no reproach at all. The Greek word never rises to this dignified sense.Deu 33:26Deu 33:29Psa 68:34
It can picture the swelling surge of nature, the rising heave of the sea and the ridged rows of Leviathan's scales, a physical uprising the Greek word does not describe.Psa 46:3Job 41:15
Most often it names human pride as a settled inner disposition, the haughty self-exaltation of the wicked heart, the pride that goes before a fall.Psa 10:2Pro 29:23
What scholars say about hubris
The twentieth-century picture of hybris as pride against the gods was overturned by N. R. E. Fisher (1992), who defined it from Homer, tragedy, the orators, and Aristotle (Rhetoric 1378b) as the deliberate infliction of dishonour and shame on a victim for the perpetrator's own pleasure of superiority. Douglas Cairns (1996) added that Aristotle also roots it in a settled disposition, so the concept covers both the dishonouring act and the character behind it. The Septuagint retheologized the word, using it in roughly 45 to 50 places to render Hebrew terms for pride and insolence (ga'on, ga'avah, zadon), which is the source of the humility-versus-pride antithesis; Georg Bertram's TDNT article (8:295-307) treats this theologized sense as the standard theological reference point. First-century papyri, catalogued in Moulton-Milligan (647), show the ordinary Koine sense to be concrete outrage, insult, and physical assault, often paired with blows. Moises Silva's NIDNTTE and Spicq's Theological Lexicon accordingly moderate older attempts to import Homeric and tragic overtones into the New Testament, and Louw-Nida place the New Testament noun primarily in the semantic domains of insult and of violence and harm, only secondarily in arrogance. For the two Acts occurrences the noun is the specialized extension for storm violence attested in Pindar and Josephus.
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
N. R. E. Fisher, Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1992)monograph
Douglas L. Cairns, 'Hybris, Dishonour, and Thinking Big,' Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996): 1-32article
Georg Bertram, 'ὕβρις κτλ.,' Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 8:295-307theological-dictionary
James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1930), 647lexicon
Moisés Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDNTTE), rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), s.v. ὕβριςtheological-dictionary
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon (LSJ), 9th ed., s.v. ὕβριςlexicon
Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. ὕβριςlexicon
Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, domains 20, 33, and 88lexicon
Margaret E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (ICC)commentary
C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (ICC)commentary