Witness
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G3144 is a noun for a witness, a person who gives testimony or can attest a matter. Its thirty-five governed forms identify legal witnesses, resurrection witnesses, people who heard teaching, God invoked as witness, Jesus as the faithful and true Witness, Stephen and Antipas as faithful witnesses killed for their allegiance, and the great cloud of witnesses in Hebrews.
Reader summary
Full entry for μάρτυς (G3144) · Open the biblical lexicon
G3144 is a noun for a witness, a person who gives testimony or can attest a matter. Its thirty-five governed forms identify legal witnesses, resurrection witnesses, people who heard teaching, God invoked as witness, Jesus as the faithful and true Witness, Stephen and Antipas as faithful witnesses killed for their allegiance, and the great cloud of witnesses.
The BSB source-word alignment has 35 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include witnesses (20), witness (8), a witness (2), [are] witnesses (1), [our] witness (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 18:16. Its strongest book concentrations include Acts (13), Revelation (5), 1 Thessalonians (2), 1 Timothy (2).
G3144 is a noun for a witness, a person who gives testimony or can attest a matter. Its thirty-five governed forms identify legal witnesses, resurrection witnesses, people who heard teaching, God invoked as witness, Jesus as the faithful and true Witness, Stephen and Antipas as faithful witnesses killed for their allegiance, and the great cloud of witnesses in Hebrews.
The noun therefore ranges beyond either courtroom eyewitness or Christian martyr. Some witnesses testify to events they saw, some can attest what they heard, some appear in hostile legal proceedings, and God is called as witness to hidden motives. Revelation makes the costly sense explicit in named cases, but most occurrences do not mean a person who dies for faith.
Acts 1:8 directly addresses Jesus' appointed disciples and must not erase the unique apostolic resurrection witness or be used to claim that every later believer saw what they saw.
Every one of the thirty-five governed G3144 forms occupies a separate verse, with the witness-person noun spread among thirteen books. It identifies legal witnesses, apostolic witnesses, God as witness, entrusted hearers, Christ as Witness, faithful people killed for testimony, and the cloud of witnesses.
But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’
Witnesses serve truth and accountable establishment of a matter within the process Jesus describes.
You are witnesses of these things.
The appointed disciples bear direct witness to the events and message named in the surrounding verses.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Spirit-empowered witness structures Acts' geographic movement without making later Christians resurrection eyewitnesses.
They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
The word identifies witnesses within Stephen's killing and carries no automatic approval of their role.
And the things that you have heard me say among many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be qualified to teach others as well.
Witnesses support accountable transmission of teaching across generations.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us.
The preceding examples of faith surround the readers as witnesses while the direct command concerns endurance.
And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and has released us from our sins by His blood,
Christ's witness is joined to resurrection, rule, love, and redemption in Revelation's opening greeting.
I know where you live, where the throne of Satan sits, yet you hold fast to My name. You did not deny your faith in Me, even in the days of My faithful witness Antipas, who was killed among you where Satan dwells.
Antipas is both named a faithful witness and explicitly killed, so the martyr sense is contextual rather than automatic.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. One who testifies to facts personally observed, especially Christ's resurrection or God's character in covenant.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 34 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a witness
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 7 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 3 selected witnesses from 35 lexical occurrence verses.
μάρτυς is of uncertain origin - no further derivation.
The church’s identity is tied to bearing truthful testimony about the risen Christ, even when that testimony leads to suffering. 1 Timothy 5:17-25
Defines Paul’s apostolic calling flowing from encounter. Acts 1:1-11
Accountability must be grounded in verified testimony, preventing slander. Acts 22:6-16
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
G3144 names a person whose testimony matters, but the governed witness resists a single romantic definition. Some witnesses establish a matter, some participate in unjust proceedings, the apostles testify directly to the risen Jesus, and God is invoked as witness to motives people cannot see. Hebrews surrounds believers with prior examples of faith, while Revelation begins with Jesus as the faithful Witness and names Antipas as a faithful witness who was killed.
Churches should preserve the apostles' unique eyewitness role, transmit their testimony accurately, test present claims fairly, and prepare for costly faithfulness without seeking danger. A witness serves truth; the title does not make a person infallible, heroic, or immune from examination.
Luke.24.48
The thirty-five noun forms use nine surface forms and seven parsing patterns. Context identifies whether the witness is legal, apostolic, divine, communal, Christological, or explicitly killed for faithful testimony.
Matthew 18 directly cites the scriptural two-or-three-witness principle, while Hebrews 11 gathers Israel's faithful before naming the cloud of witnesses. These explicit links govern the cross-Testament development.
MorphGNT Strong's Dictionary XML — CC0 1.0 Public Domain
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (morphhb/OSHB) — CC BY 4.0
Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon — CC BY 4.0
Berean Standard Bible (BSB) source-word alignment - CC0 Public Domain