a person who claims the standing of a prophet, someone sent to speak for God, but does not really have it, so what he says cannot be trusted as God's word.
This word does not exist in Greek before the Bible. Greek-speaking Jews coined it, most likely for the book of Jeremiah, because everyday pagan Greek had no ready word for a fake prophet: it used a different title, seer (in Greek, mantis), for someone who predicted the future by divination, and simply attached "false" to that instead. Once Bible translators had settled on "prophet" for the Hebrew word navi (נָבִיא), they needed a new compound to say a given prophet was not the real thing, and this word is what they built.
Scholars agree closely on what it claims: that the person does not truly hold the standing he claims, and that his words are therefore not from God. Where they differ, in the fine print, is what the "false" half is really pointing at. Older dictionaries lean toward "lying prophet," someone deliberately dishonest. The reading now more widely followed, based on how the Jewish writer Philo used the word, leans toward "illegitimate prophet": someone with no genuine claim to the office at all, whether or not he personally means to deceive. Because ancient Jewish and Christian writers assumed a message from someone with no real claim to speak for God could not be God's word anyway, both readings usually land on the same practical conclusion.
The New Testament applies the word to very different kinds of people:
- wandering preachers who claim to speak and work wonders in Jesus's name
- court prophets of old who told kings only what they wanted to hear
- a magician working for a Roman official
- teachers inside the church itself
- people who once belonged to a Christian community and left holding a different view of who Jesus is
Only in Revelation does the word turn into something like a title, "the false prophet," naming one specific end-times figure said to perform fake miracles on behalf of a great beast. What holds every use together is not a shared job description but a shared accusation: this person is not what he claims to be, so what he says does not come from God.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the "false" half of this word mainly marks the person as a liar (someone who knowingly speaks dishonestly) or as illegitimate (someone with no genuine claim to the prophetic office at all, whether or not he consciously deceives).
- minorityThe word mainly marks the person as a liar: a prophet who says things that are not true.; Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. ψευδοπροφήτης
- majorityThe word mainly marks the person as illegitimate or counterfeit, someone who has no true claim to speak for God at all, whether or not he is consciously lying.; Gerhard Friedrich, "προφήτης," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 6; Moisés Silva (ed.), New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, s.v. προφήτης; Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, vol. 3, s.v. προφήτης