Greek word · G112

ἄθεος

atheos

without God

(1) Not believing in or not honouring the gods: an accusation of impiety. (2) Godless in conduct, wicked. (3) Abandoned by the gods, without divine help. In Greek it is relational and civic far more often than it is a philosophical denial that gods exist.

Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·

What it means

ἄ-θεος, -ον,

1. in cl.

(a) slighting or denyiyig the gods (Plat.; cf. MM, VGT, see word);

(b) godless, ungodly (Pind.);

(with) abandoned by the gods (Soph.)

2. In the NT (cf. Lft. on Ign. ad Trail, §3), of the heathen, without God, not knowing God (Cremer, 281): Ephesians 2:12.

† (AS)

From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Ephesians 2:12

Range of meaning

(1) Not believing in or not honouring the gods: an accusation of impiety. (2) Godless in conduct, wicked. (3) Abandoned by the gods, without divine help. In Greek it is relational and civic far more often than it is a philosophical denial that gods exist.

Against the English

Every major English version has "without God," which is good. Readers who know the Greek behind it, or who hear "atheist," may wrongly import the modern idea of philosophical unbelief.

How it drifted

"Atheist" in the modern sense of someone who denies that any god exists took shape in 16th–17th-century Europe. In antiquity atheos was mostly an accusation of failing to honour the right gods.

Used elsewhere in the period

Used only here in the New Testament. Plato discusses atheoi in Laws book 10. According to Josephus (Against Apion 2.148), Apollonius Molon slandered Jews as atheoi because they rejected the city gods. In the Martyrdom of Polycarp (9.2) the crowd shouts "Away with the atheists!" at Christians. Paul turns the word around: by Jewish standards, the pagans were the godless ones.

Where it appears

Ephesians · 1

  1. Ephesians 2:12 ἄθεοι without God

    remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.

    Here: "Without God," here meaning without the true God and without any relationship to him. It does not mean they denied that gods exist. These readers had once worshipped many gods.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.