The verb διδωμι (didomi) means to give

The verb διδωμι (didomi) means to give and is used largely on a par with the English verb "to give". It describes the willingly handing over of items (Matthew 4:9) or services (Matthew 10:8), giving in response to being asked for something (Matthew 7:7), bestowing on people certain powers (Matthew 10:1), wages (Matthew 20:4), legislation (John 7:19), conditions (John 10:28), answers (John 1:22), knowledge (Matthew 13:11), glory (Revelation 4:9), or breakthroughs of a socio-technological nature: a well (John 4:12), an open door (Revelation 3:8).

Our verb may be used in the sense of to offer sacrifices (Luke 2:24) or praise (Luke 18:43). It may describe a logical or procedural result or progression and as such appear where in English a verb other than "to give" is preferred: the moon gives light (Matthew 24:29), false prophets give signs (Matthew 24:24), heaven gives rain (James 5:18), the earth gives produce (Matthew 13:8).

Our verb may be used in the sense of giving up someone (Luke 7:15, John 10:29) or something (Luke 15:22, Matthew 7:6, Revelation 20:13), to commit oneself to something (2 Corinthians 8:5, Galatians 1:4), or to charge someone with certain tasks (John 5:36, Ephesians 1:22).

The verb διδωμι (didomi) is used 414 times in the New Testament, see full concordance, and comes with more than a dozen derivations such as the familiar noun δοσις (dosis, meaning a giving (hence our English word "dose") and the names Dorothy and Dorean.

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The Greek verb didomi means to give

The Greek verb εγειρω (egeiro) means to awaken

The verb εγειρω (egeiro) means to awaken, incite, rouse or rise. There's no proper English equivalent of this verb but it indicates the opposite of being inactive and inattentive (or asleep) and is as such used figuratively to describe a becoming alert or focused, or getting underway on a journey or perhaps en route to an understanding.

Our verb is often translated with terms like "rise" or "awaken" but the emphasis lies on the gathering up of one's scattered thoughts or unconscious attentions and bundling these into a unified purpose.

It's used 139 times in the New Testament, see full concordance and comes with a bunch of derivatives.

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Get Wow-Wow-Woke Already!!!

Free online concordance of Hallelujah in the New Testament

Check out our free online concordance of New Testament Greek. It lists all words that occur more than 3 times, and offers links to their respective dictionary pages and analyses of the grammar.

Guess how many times the familiar word Hallelujah occurs in the New Testament. A mere 4 times:

Check out of free online concordance of Hallelujah in the New Testament ...

What's fishy about the name Philologus?

The name Philologus occurs only once in the Bible, namely at the end of Paul's letter to the Romans (Romans 16:15). Since Christianity was pretty much illegal in Rome, it's unlikely that Paul would mention the real and traceable names of his friends in the capital. It's therefore more likely that Paul used a kind of code, referring to historical figures or scenes from "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16) to get his final (and perhaps politically incorrect or even illegal) points across.

The name Philologus is rather unusual. The only one named such, as far as we know, was Andromachus Philologus, the husband of a 3rd century BC poet named Moero, from whom no work is extant. But the meaning of the name Philologus is so strikingly fitting the husband of a poet that one may be forgiven entertaining the possibility that our "name" is jocular.

The "name" Philologus is the same as the word philologus, which is quite a common term in classical literature, and literally means "fond of words" or "talkative". Plato had Socrates use it for himself, when the latter was enticed by his rhetoric sparring partner to speak on an unfamiliar topic, by swearing upon not some god but rather a tree that he would (Plato Phaedrus.236e; see Galatians 3:13). Other writers used it to express a fondness of philosophical argument, or of learning, and as such as synonym for student or eager pupil.

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Did God destroy the tower of Babel for punishment?

God is happy to see people unite and approach Him, but the Tower-builders were wrong about thinking that stacking stones (literally 'works') together would get them closer to heaven. Their goal was good, their effort folly.

God destroyed the effort and introduced variety of speech. Soon after, Abram was called and was promised blessing for all nations. Jesus became that which the Tower-builders were after: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." — John 12:32.

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The Greek noun πνευμα (pneuma) means exhalation not "spirit"

Contrary to pagan musings, when a person's breathing departs from him/her, it doesn't go anywhere, it just stops. But at the promised resurrection of the body (Mark 12:8-27, John 5:28-29, John 11:25, 1 Corinthians 15:1-58, Philippians 3:10) it returns — that is to say, the person starts to breathe again and becomes a living soul once again (see Genesis 2:7: "and Adam became a living soul"; he didn't get one).

The noun πνευμα (pneuma), which is often translated with "spirit," likewise comes from a verb that has to do with breathing (namely πνεω, pneo; and see our article on this verb to meet our noun's siblings), but this time the verb emphasizes a breathing out rather than in. The difference is colossal, because even though both inhaling and exhaling are part of the same process (namely breathing) and this very process demonstrates that a person is alive, the inhaling part is all about deeply needing something that you can get all around, whereas the exhaling part is about releasing waste products and the excess of stuff that you took for yourself but in the end had no need for.

And of course, onto our breathing-out we can piggyback a wonderful array of signals, from whistles and shouts to Psalms and Shakespeare and even scent-signals that tell our neighbors whether we are healthy or not. And that's the key idea of the spirit: the ability to bond with other beings (including God) and create the larger structures we call societies and cultures (see for instance Daniel 10:20). Likewise the Holy Spirit is not a part of God but God doing something, predominantly uniting people into what's called the Body of Christ.

Spirit is a word like electricity; it doesn't sit at some specific location and does not take on the personality of the one it moves. Spirit leads elements into a common direction, just like the wind that waves through a field of standing grain or scoops up piles of leaves and makes them dance like birds in the air. Flocks of starlings or schools of fish operate on the spiritual principle, and so do bees and ants.

It may be a bit of a let down for people who believe that incense, rainbows and healing crystals are "spiritual things", but no, there are no "spiritual things" and all spirit is willful interaction and cooperation. Our cities are highly spiritual, but so of course is our language. It's taking eons of interaction and forming agreements to produce the language we use today, and there is very little on earth that is more spiritual than language (apart perhaps from the Internet).

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