StrongerBible

hubristēs

ὑβριστής

GreekG5197“insolent, violent, ...”

Appears 2 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Rom 1:301Ti 1:13
Word studyResearch-gradehoo-bris-TACEnoun

What hubristēs means

an insolent, violent person: someone whose arrogance breaks out into the open humiliation and mistreatment of others

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This word names far more than ordinary pride. In the Greek world it described a person whose sense of superiority spilled out into shaming and injuring other people. Such a person did not merely think highly of himself; he acted on it, insulting and hurting those who could not fight back, and taking a kind of pleasure in it. The arrogance and the cruelty are fused: this is pride that has become a weapon.

In Romans 1:30 Paul lines up three overlapping words for pride, and this is the one that names the pride which acts:

In 1 Timothy 1:13 Paul turns the word on himself. He confesses that he was once "a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man," and the company it keeps there is decisive: his campaign against Christians was not mere religious zeal but arrogant cruelty that shamed and injured innocent people. The word is paired with the abstract noun for the outrage itself (ὕβρις) and the verb for committing it (ὑβρίζω), and across the New Testament the whole family keeps this hard edge of contempt made concrete in speech and action.

Rom 1:301Ti 1:13

Disputed

Whether the word's weight falls on the inner disposition of arrogant contempt or on the outward act of shaming and injuring others. Scholars agree the term fuses both; they differ on which to foreground, especially in Paul's self-description in 1 Timothy 1:13.

  • contestedThe stress falls on the arrogant disposition, the contempt from which the acts of mistreatment flow.; Luke Timothy Johnson, The First and Second Letters to Timothy, Anchor Bible 35A (2001), 178-182; I. Howard Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, ICC (1999), 391-393
  • contestedThe stress falls on the concrete outrage: the violent, shaming mistreatment of others.; Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, NICNT (2006), 137-141; Raymond F. Collins, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, New Testament Library (2002), 34-39; William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, WBC 46 (2000), 50-52

What scholars say about hubristēs

Scholarship traces this term from Homer and Attic law through Aristotle's Rhetoric (2.2, 1378b), where ὕβρις is defined as doing or saying things that shame the victim purely for the pleasure of feeling superior. N. R. E. Fisher's monograph Hybris (1992) argues that its essence is the deliberate infliction of dishonor on another, while Georg Bertram (TDNT 8) shows how the Septuagint moralized the term, using ὑβριστής to render Hebrew words for the proud oppressor (זֵד, גֵּאֶה) at Job 40:11, Proverbs 15:25, and Isaiah 2:12. On Romans 1:30, Cranfield, Moo, Fitzmyer, Dunn, and Jewett all read it as arrogant, contemptuous mistreatment of others, and Trench's classic study of synonyms sets it as the pride-word that acts (over against the boaster in word and the proud in thought). On 1 Timothy 1:13 the commentators divide by emphasis rather than substance: Johnson and Marshall stress the arrogant disposition, while Towner, Collins, and Mounce stress the concrete violence of Paul's persecution. BDAG, Louw-Nida (§88.132), Moulton-Milligan, and Spicq's Theological Lexicon converge on a single fused definition: an arrogant person who insults or injures others.

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

  • Walter Bauer, F. W. Danker, et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (BDAG), 3rd ed. (2000), 1022, s.v. ὑβριστήςlexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (1989), §88.132lexicon
  • J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (1930), s.vv. ὕβρις, ὑβριστήςlexicon
  • Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, trans. J. D. Ernest (1994), 3:385-390theological-dictionary
  • Georg Bertram, "ὕβρις κτλ.," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 8 (1972), 295-307theological-dictionary
  • N. R. E. Fisher, Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece (1992)monograph
  • Richard C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, 9th ed. (1880), §xxix, 93-97monograph
  • C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, ICC (1975-79), 1:129-132commentary
  • Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (1996), 118-122commentary
  • Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans, Anchor Bible 33 (1993), 279-283commentary
  • Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, Hermeneia (2007), 184-190commentary
  • Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, NICNT (2006), 137-141commentary
  • William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, WBC 46 (2000), 50-52commentary

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

All attested forms of ὑβριστής

accusative m p

ὑβριστάς

Rom 1:30

accusative m s

ὑβριστήν

1Ti 1:13