Free online Biblical New Testament Greek Dictionary
Abarim Publications' online Theological Dictionary of the New Testament was originally designed to feed into our articles on the meaning and etymology of Biblical names, but after much demand we're happy to present something of an index.
There are 585 articles in our Greek dictionary that together treat thousands of Greek words. The articles are listed alphabetically according to the most dominant verbal element. For instance, the verb αναψυχω (anapsucho), meaning to reinvigorate, can be found under the verb ψυχω (psucho), meaning to breathe.
The emphasis of our online dictionary is two-fold. Besides looking at he absolute meaning of words and their usage both in the text of the New Testament and secular works, we also look at the parental words they stem from and their sibling derivatives.
Sometimes the scope of words is so great that their dictionary articles inadvertently take on the form of something out of a Biblical encyclopedia. We list those dictionary specials from our Greek online dictionaries below for your convenience. See our Hebrew dictionary for more topics.
Abarim Publications' Theological Dictionary
Go to the Hebrew index
The Greek index:
Abarim Publications' Free online Dictionary of Biblical New Testament Greek
Special topics
Physics & cosmology
• Why 'agape' makes the world go round; lessons in love from modern physics
The Greek word αγαπη (agape) is usually translated with 'love' but it relates to φιλος (philos) the way gravity relates to electromagnetism ...
... continue reading →
• The physical and tangible reality of holiness
The word holiness is familiar but what on earth does it stand for? It's certainly not merely some laudable quality but also corresponds to a very real and measurable physical principle.
... continue reading →
• How joy relates to reason can be understood by looking at how stars form
Reason contracts knowledge, but joy begins when nuclear fusion commences and streams of living water burst forth from within.
... continue reading →
• Life is a network of interacting elements
Life is not a condition but rather a progression, namely that of increasing complexity and thus diversity. The opposite, namely to die, is a decrease in complexity and diversity. The process of evolution is commonly very poorly understood but it's very real but obviously not a carnival of accidents.
... continue reading →
• Life, death and the New Jerusalem: the extreme states of the universe
The universe can exist in any state between two extremes, namely the singularity and heat death. Life exists in a much smaller window of opportunity, and the New Jerusalem in one smaller still. Stacked these windows form a pyramid, and it's clear that the ancients were on to something.
... continue reading →
• Signals are either light (electromagnetic) or sound (gravitational) signals
The two sorts of signals that are possible in the universe and any subsequent realm such as life, mind and society, are: (1) information stored in electromagnetism and (2) information stored in gravity. The mental equivalent of the first is called γινωσκω (ginosko), meaning 'knowledge', and the mental equivalent of the second is called αγαπη (agape), commonly translated with 'love'.
... continue reading →
• Theology and the Theory of Everything: it started with a kiss
The Greek verb that describes getting to know a person, from the first meet to a full merger, derives from the verb to kiss. Likewise the union of mankind of the Creator, which culminates in an intimate knowledge of the Logos (theology), starts with a kiss.
... continue reading →
• The Passion of the Christ and the Theory of Everything
How the Greek verb pascho helps to explain everything about everything, even the hallowed but ever elusive Theory of Everything.
... continue reading →
• Stars and fractals: the many hearts of wisdom
The reality which the Bible describes is based on a vast fractal pattern, and the Bible is able to describe this fractal by being a fractal itself.
... continue reading →
Psychology
• What on earth are angels?
A close look at the psychological reality that sits at the heart of what mythology calls angels: What are angels, really? Why do angels have wings? Are angels real?
... continue reading →
• How man's glorious imagination builds God's temple
Mankind's amazing powers of willful reflection and ability to deliberately generate reality out of initially imagined things is the very fuel of all cultural and technological evolution, and will ultimately bring about the New Jerusalem.
... continue reading →
• Three Greek verbs of seeing in the sense of understanding
The three Greek verbs 'eido', 'horao' and 'optomai' mean to see but mostly in the sense of understanding. From the first Greek verb come the English nouns 'idea' and 'idol' and that second word also covers any 'statement of faith' and those are obviously forbidden.
... continue reading →
• To discern means to have the ability to see differences
Not intelligence but the eagerness to defend one's opponent's right to oppose marks man's transcendence of the animal realm. Animals go after what they want; enlightened people love their enemies.
... continue reading →
• To witness is to create - different levels of reality
Our reality is a matter of relativity and it consists of the relationships between elements. These relationships are self-organizing and are rigged to bring forth something no element in itself could have begun to think of. Hence material atoms somehow brought forth living cells. And living cells somehow brought forth conscious minds. And conscious minds are right now bringing forth something that vastly exceeds the scope of one.
... continue reading →
• Nominal Reasoning: having words means making universes
Language requires something that is deeply defining of humans, and that is abstraction. Humans are capable of "naming" separate things, and that allows them to think about these things even when they are not directly in sight. That allows conscious thought and provokes a sense of self that wouldn't exist without language.
... continue reading →
• Faith: persuasion and belief
The verb πειθω (peitho) and its derived noun πιστις (pistis) are possibly the most signature words of the Greek New Testament. The verb means to persuade or be persuaded, and the noun means faith; trust or certainty. From the noun in turn derives the equally important verb πιστευω (pisteuo), meaning to have faith, that is: to behave as someone who has been persuaded into certainty.
... continue reading →
• The mystery of rejoicing. What is it, and why?
Everybody is familiar with the verbs to rejoice and be glad, but it's wildly unclear what real-world act, activity or deed is described by it. This is probably why half the world is on crack and no party is complete without sedation and violent stimulants.
... continue reading →
• Theory of Mind: the night vision that conquered death
Theory of Mind allows intelligent creatures to understand that others may have different points of view. Scientific research into this phenomenon is relatively recent but the Bible devotes quite a bit of space to the discussion of it.
... continue reading →
• What are demons, and how to get rid of them?
Calvin's dad once told the harrowing tale of a loose hand that went around by itself and strangled people, which pretty much explains what a demon is. Why demons are bad is explained by the difference between polytheism and monotheism. And what you can do about them comes with scientific rigor.
... continue reading →
• Hope and the scientific method
Hope is not something wished-for but something worked-toward. Hope is a calm and unceremonious comprehension of something that is known to exist at the end of a process or path. Hoping involves no yearning or panting or supplications but rather knowledge, reason and calculations. Hope is not an emotional thing. It's a science thing.
... continue reading →
• Autism is an innate form of social blindness - the Bible often tells of it
Autism is an innate form of social blindness, but, as the Bible tells, perfectly healthy people are prone to acquire a form of it by stubbornly maintaining limiting beliefs. A 'blind' waterway was a waterway that was normally open but silted shut from garbage and mud.
... continue reading →
• The Social Psychology of Planets
If our collective human mind and the solar system in which it emerged are self-similar, we should be able to derive useful psychological models from cosmological models. As Hermes said: 'As above, so below'. Or in the words of Jesus: 'On earth as it is in heaven...'
... continue reading →
• The Cosmology of Consciousness
The crucifixion of Christ also tells of a solar eclipse and of consciousness beyond personal enlightenment.
... continue reading →
• The tachyon is the quantum of mind
The hypothetical tachyon is a particle that travels faster than light, which makes it go backward in time, and this is precisely where memory and consciousness come from.
... continue reading →
• Man, coal and flowers
The Greek idea of man and mankind may be explained by a look at the words for slowly burning fires and flowers
... continue reading →
Society
• Sin has nothing to do with breaking some formal law and everything with getting in nature's way
Sin has nothing to do with being guilty and everything with being in a situation in which you don't belong. Rich people want you to believe that sin has to do with being uppity, but the imposition of poverty is the most evil of evils.
... continue reading →
• Servitude keeps nations healthy but compromised wisdom centers cause social lymphedema
For most of us, our modern world is a hell hole in which a small oligarchy tyrannizes the enslaved masses by means of artificially sustained poverty and ignorance. Trying to remedy this situation starts with understanding how things got to be this way. Fortunately, this is really quite easy to do.
... continue reading →
• The nature, demise and healing of nations in the New Testament
Nations are a very big deal in the Bible but national borders the way we know them are relatively modern, completely artificial and invented for the sole purpose of physically separating money streams and centering these upon national treasuries. Fortunately, healing is imminent.
... continue reading →
• Why temples are where human societies began
The monumental expression of a society's collective muscle expressed the collective identity of the society, and probably evolved into facilities for storage of the society's collective surplus. The next step was the rise of tribal totems and then patron deities and subsequently priestly elites and wisdom traditions.
... continue reading →
• I am the Way - the base of empire
When Jesus said, 'I am the Way,' the Romans had built their highly advanced road system quite literally to tie the whole empire together. Followers of Jesus are called to provide the Kingdom of God with a binding network much stronger than that coming from fancy pavement.
... continue reading →
• Why poverty is the sin against the Holy Spirit
Poverty is the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit. It's a social cancer that eats away a person's autonomy and dignity. It eats away a person's social network and range of engagements. It limits a person's pursuit of interests and prohibits a person to partake in the casual exchange of resources that defines modern existence.
... continue reading →
• Bodies: corporeal beings from atoms to entire societies
A body is an economy, and all economies have parts that correspond to physical body parts, from flesh and bones to the cardiovascular and digestive systems. Social health can thus be learned from physical health.
... continue reading →
• Deliver us from labor and lead us not into need
Our world's deliberately generated shortages are explained by elaborate mythologies that have convinced otherwise reasonable people of the perfect acceptability of one dude owning a Lamborghini while the next dude is forced to choose between paying the rent and feeding the children.
... continue reading →
• Heeding the Head; why the modern head is not the same as the Biblical head
In antiquity a person's mind, emotions and intellect was not considered seated in the head but rather in the belly. More specifically: feelings were ascribed to the bowels and one's will to one's genitals. The head merely carried one's social identity.
... continue reading →
• Death and tax and evil in the New Testament
Paying standard taxes to fund future public works was an enormously important social achievement (ascribed to Abraham and Melchizedek) but the Romans devised a tax system designed to hemorrhage their victims of wealth, stamina and economic diversity. Subsequently, tax-collectors in the New Testament were considered the human equivalent of demons.
... continue reading →
• How Circumcision Created the Modern World
Mankind started in the caves and now we all have smart phones. How on earth did that happen? Circumcision is how. That and some other things.
... continue reading →
• 666: the Number of the Beast
A slightly less hysterical look at the enduring mystery of 666, its relation to freedom and bondage and the natural evolution of society.
... continue reading →
• It is for freedom that Christ has set us free - Galatians 5:1
Let's have a long look at the miraculous word eleutheria, or freedom by law, which Paul says is the purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
... continue reading →
• The manger of Jesus Christ is much bigger than the nativity story.
The manger of Jesus comes with a huge footnote: angel choirs, oxen, donkeys, magi and shepherds are all familiar players in Greco-Roman culture.
... continue reading →
• What is the flesh? What is a woman, what is a man, what is a married couple?
It took some shifting of definitions and laser-guided surgery, but we've managed to identify the three gender of humanity.
... continue reading →
• The curious link between Jews, frogs and the modern Republic
Frogs have had a bad rep since the second plague of Egypt, but that may not be deserved. In fact, a land without frogs may not be a very pleasant place to live in.
... continue reading →
• Animal Farm explains the natural political structure of post-revolution Europe, and is deeply anti-Semitic
The number nine symbolizes armed law enforcement, but Orwell's pigs reflect the rampant ant-Semitism of British literature.
... continue reading →
Information technology
• Early data retention: how the ancients initiated information technology
The authors of mankind's earliest and most cherished texts sought to compress vast amounts of data into manageable formats. The invention of script allowed data retention, and lyric compositions based on fractals and linked data became the world's first hard drives.
... continue reading →
• The Word of God once came in the flesh, and now in Linked Data
Writing is information technology, and the invention of script was in the Bronze Age as much a miracle as the invention of electronic data storage was in ours. The Word of God came once in the flesh, but in our time He came in Linked Data.
... continue reading →
• The Lion and the Lamb - the Virgin and the Child
Ancient mythologies were never meant to merely entertain and were always very serious contemplations on the nature of physical reality. The Bible the way we have it is not a shining star in an otherwise pitch black night, but rather the eye of an intellectual storm that covered the entire known world from China to West Africa and Norway to Nubia.
... continue reading →
• The curious case of baskets in the Bible
Ever since Moses was deposited in a basket among the reeds of Egypt, baskets in the Bible have symbolized encryption.
... continue reading →
• Plato: the broad road that leads to destruction
The word that describes the broad road that Jesus spoke of is nearly the same as the name Plato. The Bible respectfully but vehemently opposes Greek (and thus modern western) philosophy.
... continue reading →
Church
• How the church should treat women and wives
When Paul wrote about women in church, people had better done what he said. Today, people better do the opposite. In Christ, after all, there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28).
... continue reading →
• The gift of gab: are women to keep silent in the churches?
The "theology" of Israel differed from that of the surrounding nations in that the Jews worshipped a deity called Information, and recognized information technology as a holy endeavor and free conversation as a form of worship. Instead of demanding a forced polarization upon some narrow religious creed, they maintained that broad human convention allows ultimate psycho-diversity and is a city for everyone to live in.
... continue reading →
• Baptism - how to do it right and how to do it flat wrong
Infant or adult baptism? Or anabaptism? Do we sprinkle or plunge? Science insists that there's nothing magical about baptism and the right and wrong of it has nothing to do with protocol and everything with practical, scientific cause and effect of the whole procedure.
... continue reading →
Words
• Why left is bad and right is good
The rather curious distinction between the good right and the bad left appears to have made self-evident sense to pretty much everybody in antiquity, since it is incorporated in several broad language groups and that means it's a very old and pervasive idea. But why?
... continue reading →
• What God is and what God is not
The familiar noun θεος, 'theos', means God, and while this may seem simple enough, our word is really fantastically complicated. It also covers humans (John 10:34) and even what seems to be the devil (2 Corinthians 4:4). There's clearly more to our word the genus of the Creator.
... continue reading →
• The verb ιστημι: the most potent verb in the New Testament
The verb ιστημι (histemi) means to stand and is arguably the most dominant of the New Testament and subsequent theologies. From it stem the words for both cross (stauros) and resurrection (anastasis), both apostasy (apostasia) and ecstasy (ekstasis), as well as the familiar nouns stadium (stadion), stasis and stethos, and possibly even stereo, sterile and stick.
... continue reading →
• Kratos, a calm and intelligent kind of control
Where our modern word 'power' brings to mind some blunt and coercing force, the Greek noun κρατος (kratos) reflects a calm and intelligent kind of control; a giving kind of mastery that comes from an intimate knowledge of whatever is directed.
... continue reading →
• Kurios Theos - mister God
In Greek mythology the word 'kurios' was only very sporadically applied to the deity. Judaic Christianity, with its baffling epithet Kurios Theos, caused a global revolution because it proclaimed the Almighty to also be humanity's 'kurios': one of us.
... continue reading →
• Costly oil and purple dye - how the Murex was lifted away
In classical times, preciousness and costliness went hand in hand with purple. Royalty and nobility wore purple, and since time immemorial the Phoenicians were known for their production of it (Acts 16:14). Purple dye was produced from small marine animals called Murex (murex, muricis), and although this name sounds decidedly Dr. Seussian, it's formally unclear where this name comes from.
... continue reading →
• Why your spirit is not an independent element of your being
In our New Age world there has been as many lofty attributes assigned to the spirit as to Chuck Norris, but the truth of the matter is that all parts of you are physical, and thus part of your body. Your πνευμα (pneuma) is a mental or behavioral function and is not an independent element of your being.
... continue reading →
• What are Prophets and why are they related to Fish?
Prophets are mentioned in both the Old and the New Testaments, but references to fish are surprisingly rare in the Old Testament and surprisingly abundant in the New. This has a reason.
... continue reading →
• Where God came from: The magnificent verb τιθημι (tithemi)
The verb τιθημι (tithemi) is the divine verb of coming home, the divine verb of laying down one's life, and the divine verb of creation.
... continue reading →
• Why Jesus was no ordinary carpenter
The noun τεκτων (tekton) denotes a highly skilled master craftsman. Jesus is called the first-born of creation, whereas wisdom was the master craftsman by God's side (Proverbs 8:22-30).
... continue reading →
• The many sons of God that are mentioned in the Bible
The noun υιος (huios) doesn't simply denote one's male biological offspring, but rather a person who has been acknowledged and accepted into a household as someone who has the rank and rights of a male offspring, and whose destiny it is to represent and ultimately replace the male parent upon his death, should it occur.
... continue reading →
• A soul is not something you have but something you are
The popular idea of a personal soul that resides somewhere inside every human being, and escapes at death to go on a journey through the afterlife, is positively pagan. It is certainly not a Hebrew idea, which is why the Old Testament never speaks of "heaven and hell" (it's always "heaven and earth") or of humans living in heaven.
... continue reading →
• Why Jesus died on the cross, even though his execution didn't kill him
The death (and resurrection) of Jesus is central to many people's faith, but the Romans didn't kill Jesus and Jesus didn't die because of his crucifixion. The gospels are very clear about that, and even Jesus himself foretold what would ultimately kill him.
... continue reading →
• Of theories and theaters and the cross of Christ
Jesus was the Word-in-the-flesh (John 1:14) and his miraculous death on the cross is the Bible's only directly mentioned 'theory,' which is a word that derives from our verb thaomai, to view or observe. Our verb and its derivations may even relate to the magnificent noun theos, meaning God.
... continue reading →
• Tongues of Fire: How a zygote becomes a blastocyst and then an embryo
In Acts 2:3 tongues of fire appear on the apostles' heads but instead of this being about a groovy pyrotechnics show, it rather describes how a fertilized ovum develops widely diverse cell types while remaining a unified whole.
... continue reading →
• Eloi, Eloi, Lamma Sabachthani
The familiar phrase Eloi, Eloi, Lamma Sabachthani has surprising depth and even relates to modern research on the psychology of learning.
... continue reading →
• Modern Greek versus the Koine Greek of the New Testament
The two obviously relate, but like poodle and grey wolf. Not all Greek is the same, but the crucial difference between Koine and modern Greek is a matter of nature rather than form and vocabulary.
... continue reading →
• Alabaster: How Ali Baba rethinks the resurrection of Jesus Christ
The curious connection between the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Mary's alabaster jar, and the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
... continue reading →