Greek word · G3132
μαντεύομαι
manteuomai
to divine
To act as a mantis (seer): to give oracles, to tell people what the gods want or what will happen, and to answer questions about the future or about hidden things. Honest, paid consultation was a normal part of Greek religious life.
Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·
What it means
μαντεύομαι
(μαντίς, a seer, diviner), [in LXX for קָסַם, Deuteronomy 18:10, al. ;]
to divine, practise divination: Acts 16:16.†
SYN.: προφητεύω, which see, in distinction from which μ. is used in LXX and NT only of false prophets and those who practise the heathen arts of divination and soothsaying (cf. 1 Samuel 28:8, and see Tr., Syn., § vi) (AS)
From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
- Range of meaning
To act as a mantis (seer): to give oracles, to tell people what the gods want or what will happen, and to answer questions about the future or about hidden things. Honest, paid consultation was a normal part of Greek religious life.
- Against the English
'Fortune-telling' (BSB, WEB) and 'soothsaying' (KJV) can sound to modern ears like fairground tricks or fraud. In the Greek world, mantic consultation was taken seriously and drew clients from all social levels, who asked about marriages, journeys, business and illness.
- How it drifted
Since the Enlightenment, divination is usually thought of as superstition or a con. Ancient readers took it as a real channel to the divine, though philosophers argued about how reliable it was.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The Greek Old Testament uses this verb and its related nouns for forbidden practices: Deut 18:10 ('there shall not be found among you one who divines'), 1 Sam 28:8 (Saul and the medium), and Ezek 13:6–9 and 13:23 (false visions). The verb occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. When Christians in Luke's writings speak by God's Spirit, he uses prophēteuō ('to prophesy'), never manteuomai.
Where it appears
Acts · 1
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Acts 16:16 μαντευομένη. by fortune-telling.
One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl with a spirit of divination, who earned a large income for her masters by fortune-telling.
Here: 'By giving oracles'. This is the standard Greek word for what a mantis (seer) did, and it appears only here in the New Testament. Luke does not call what she does 'prophesying'.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.