StrongerBible

philadelphia

φιλαδελφία

GreekG5360“brotherly love, love of the brethren, ...”

Appears 6 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Rom 12:101Th 4:9Heb 13:11Pe 1:222Pe 1:7 (2×)
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradefee-lah-del-FEE-ahnoun

What philadelphia means

brotherly love: the warm, loyal affection fellow believers owe one another as brothers and sisters in one family

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

In everyday Greek this word named the affection between people born of the same mother, real brothers and sisters. Every writer from the old playwrights to Plutarch used it that way, and kings even took it as a title to show off their family loyalty. The New Testament does something startling with it: it keeps the word but changes who the brothers and sisters are.

Here the word always means love among fellow Christians, pictured as siblings in one household whose Father is God. The writers never argue for this; they simply assume it. Paul can tell a church he has never visited to keep it up (Romans 12:10), and Hebrews can plead "let brotherly love continue" (Hebrews 13:1) to a community under real pressure. The bond is meant to be as strong as blood kinship, or stronger.

This is not a lesser or softer love than the wide, self-giving love the New Testament calls ἀγάπη. The two differ in reach, not in depth: ἀγάπη is love flung wide, even toward enemies, while this word aims that same love at its home inside the family of faith. Second Peter sets them in a single climbing chain, family affection opening out into love for all (2 Peter 1:7).

Rom 12:101Th 4:9Heb 13:11Pe 1:222Pe 1:7 (2×)

What scholars say about philadelphia

In all pre-Christian Greek the word-group denotes affection between biological siblings: LSJ and BDAG catalog Sophocles, Xenophon, Plutarch, and inscriptional and papyrus evidence, and Plutarch's treatise De fraterno amore (Moralia 478A to 492D) is the fullest ancient discussion, always of literal brothers. Ptolemaic and Attalid dynasties took Philadelphos as a royal epithet of family concord. Hellenistic Judaism supplies the bridge to metaphor: the word-group appears in the Septuagint only in the Maccabean books, and 2 Maccabees 15:14 already applies philadelphos to loving one's fellow Jews (Spicq; Staehlin, TDNT). The New Testament decisively reassigns the referent to the church: Louw-Nida (25.44) defines it simply as affection for a fellow believer, with no literal-sibling entry, and Aasgaard argues Paul may have been the first to use the noun for a non-kin group. The major sociological studies read philadelphia as the affect proper to the strongest Mediterranean kin-tie, the sibling bond, within a surrogate family whose Father is God (Aasgaard; Hellerman; Elliott on 1 Peter; Horrell traces a canonical shift from sibling language toward the household-of-God frame). Bauckham reads the chain in 2 Peter 1:7 as moving from piety toward God, to affection within the Christian family, to love for all. A minority (Arzt-Grabner; Filannino) cautions that brother-language was common in Greco-Roman associations, so the Christian usage may be less distinctive than the strong fictive-kinship thesis claims. On 1 Thessalonians 4:9 scholars divide over whether Paul engages a Greco-Roman virtue theme (Malherbe; Kloppenborg) or the new-covenant promise that God's people will be taught by God (Wanamaker; Fee), with many holding both. Across all of this the lexicons are unanimous on the sense itself.

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

  • LSJ (9th ed. with Revised Supplement), s.v. φιλαδελφία, φιλάδελφοςlexicon
  • BDAG (3rd ed., 2000), s.v. φιλαδελφία, φιλάδελφοςlexicon
  • J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (2nd ed.; UBS, 1989), 25.44lexicon
  • C. Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (Hendrickson, 1994), 3:448-52theological-dictionary
  • Gustav Stählin, "φίλος κτλ.," TDNT 9:113-71theological-dictionary
  • Reidar Aasgaard, "My Beloved Brothers and Sisters!": Christian Siblingship in Paul (JSNTSup 265; T&T Clark, 2004)monograph
  • Joseph H. Hellerman, The Ancient Church as Family (Fortress, 2001)monograph
  • David G. Horrell, "From ἀδελφοί to οἶκος θεοῦ: Social Transformation in Pauline Christianity," JBL 120 (2001): 293-311article
  • Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (WBC 50; Word, 1983), 185-93commentary
  • John H. Elliott, 1 Peter (AYB 37B; Doubleday, 2000)commentary
  • Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians (AB 32B; Doubleday, 2000), 244-48commentary

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

All attested forms of φιλαδελφία

accusative f s

φιλαδελφίαν

1Pe 1:22, 2Pe 1:7

dative f s

φιλαδελφίᾳ

Rom 12:10, 2Pe 1:7

genitive f s

φιλαδελφίας

1Th 4:9

nominative f s

φιλαδελφία

Heb 13:1