Greek word · G540

ἀπάτωρ

apatōr

fatherless

Literally 'fatherless, motherless.' Greek used them in three ways: (1) for orphans or foundlings with no known parents; (2) in legal and administrative use, for a child whose father was unknown or unregistered, especially an illegitimate child (Egyptian papyri of the Roman period record people as...

Appears once in the Greek New Testament. ·

What it means

ἀπάτωρ, -ορος, ὁ, ὴ

(ἀ- neg., πατήρ)

1. fatherless.

2. without father (MM, VGT, see word), i.e., with no recorded genealogy: Hebrews 7:3.†

(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 Hebrews 7:3

Range of meaning

Literally 'fatherless, motherless.' Greek used them in three ways: (1) for orphans or foundlings with no known parents; (2) in legal and administrative use, for a child whose father was unknown or unregistered, especially an illegitimate child (Egyptian papyri of the Roman period record people as apatōr); (3) in religious and philosophical writing, for gods with no parent in myth (Athena was 'motherless', born from Zeus' head; Hephaestus was sometimes called 'fatherless'). Later Greek and Christian writers used the pair for the supreme God, who has no origin.

Against the English

English 'without father, without mother' sounds like a statement about biology: he simply had no parents. The Greek can carry that sense, but its everyday use was about missing parents or missing records. Joined to the third word, 'without genealogy', it points to record rather than biology.

How it drifted

Readers who meet the words in isolation take them as a claim of supernatural origin. The pairing with agenealogētos and the argument in 7:6 ('not traced from them') get lost.

Used elsewhere in the period

Euripides, Ion 109: the foundling Ion, a temple servant at Delphi, calls himself amētōr apatōr te, 'motherless and fatherless'. Philo calls the number seven 'motherless', comparing it to Athena (On the Creation 100). He also calls Sarah 'motherless' because Scripture names only her father (Gen 20:12; Philo, On Drunkenness 61), which is an argument from what the text leaves out, much like Hebrews here. In the papyri apatōr is a legal label for a person of unknown father (Moulton–Milligan).

Where it appears

Hebrews · 1

  1. Hebrews 7:3 ἀπάτωρ, Without father,

    Without father or mother or genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God, he remains a priest for all time.

    Here: Literally 'without a father'. In ordinary Greek it described an orphan or a child whose father was unknown or not on record. Here it opens a list of things the Genesis account does not give for Melchizedek.

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