Here is an evolving collection of Koine Keywords. Such words are “key” either because of their high number of occurrences, or for their significance.
In the main body of each entry is a brief lexical definition. The accompanying hotlink connects to a separate page providing a deeper dive on the definition and its Biblical usage.
The Bible as its Own Lexicon
As the Bible itself is the best source for the meaning of any given keyword from the references to other passages of use. However, that the same Koine word does not necessarily mean exactly the same thing in every passage.
Each word has a “semantic range” of meaning. The meaning in context derives from the study of the passage in question from the level of the phrase to the sentence to the paragraph to the pericope to the chapter and book.
Further, the Koine words in which the NT (and the OT as the LXX) is written did not descend from a unique heavenly language. Koine was the common language the NT era and the preceding and succeeding multiple centuries. The words in Scripture commonly derive from meanings that were known to the people of the day.
When Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, he used the common Koine language of the day. But the hearers were a mixed multitude: some were followers (and believers), some nascent believers, some questioners, and so forth, including at least one disciple / tool of Satan himself (Judas Iscariot). Such mixed multitude grasped the words proclaimed in the sense that they recognized their Koine meaning, and thereby could assemble the individual words into the whole thought of individual sentences, and beyond to a whole idea, such as we think of as a paragraph, or pericope, comprising an oration (speech).
But grasping true Biblical meaning is something far deeper that merely recognizing the dictionary meaning of a sequence of words spoken. We commonly make exactly such distinction when we say “he heard me…but he didn’t ‘get it.'”
Our purpose here, and only aided by the work of the Holy Spirit Who is the One who brings us to the knowledge of such matters, is to apply ourselves, with goal that we indeed ‘get it.’ However, we are never done-done with such ‘getting.’ The Bible is inexhaustible in both its depth of meaning and its interconnectedness. We will never be at some completely comprehending state of being in this life, and we will ever be a learner in Heaven.
But let us endeavor to push back the darkness of ignorance, and worse, to see light, and ever more light.
Koine Category 1 Words: Words of Particular Significance
In this category, we will include words which are particularly distinctive as their NT significance.