Fatherland
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The Greek noun patris names a place associated with one's fathers, usually a hometown, native place, homeland, or country of one's own. In the Gospels it repeatedly identifies Jesus' hometown, where familiar knowledge of His family becomes a setting for offense and withheld honor.
Reader summary
Full entry for πατρίς (G3968) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Greek noun patris names a place associated with one's fathers, usually a hometown, native place, homeland, or country of one's own. In the Gospels it repeatedly identifies Jesus' hometown, where familiar knowledge of His family becomes a setting for offense and withheld honor.
The BSB source-word alignment has 8 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include hometown (6), . . . (1), a country of their own (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 13:54. Its strongest book concentrations include Luke (2), Mark (2), Matthew (2), Hebrews (1).
The Greek noun patris names a place associated with one's fathers, usually a hometown, native place, homeland, or country of one's own. In the Gospels it repeatedly identifies Jesus' hometown, where familiar knowledge of His family becomes a setting for offense and withheld honor. In Hebrews 11, the word widens to a country sought by people who confess that they are strangers and pilgrims, and the surrounding passage directs their hope toward a better, heavenly country prepared by God.
Patris names belonging and origin, but it does not make every attachment to homeland righteous or every departure faithless. Jesus' hometown witnesses also show that familiarity can coexist with unbelief, yet they do not authorize contempt for local communities or excuse a teacher from accountability. The word should be read at the scale each context supplies, town or homeland, and must not be turned into a command for nationalism, ethnic superiority, forced return, or disregard for refugees and displaced people.
Patris names one's hometown or homeland, joining familial belonging and native place with Gospel scenes of local rejection and Hebrews' pilgrim search for a better country.
Coming to His hometown, He taught the people in their synagogue, and they were astonished. “Where did this man get such wisdom and miraculous powers?” they asked.
Jesus teaches in His hometown synagogue, where astonishment at His wisdom is filtered through the crowd's familiarity with His family.
Then Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his own household is a prophet without honor.”
Jesus names the lack of honor a prophet may meet in hometown, kinship, and household circles without condemning every local relationship.
Then He added, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.
Luke places the hometown saying inside Jesus' Nazareth sermon, where the congregation resists grace extending beyond expected local claims.
Now He Himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.
John recalls Jesus' testimony about a prophet lacking honor in his hometown while narrating His movement back into Galilee.
Now those who say such things show that they are seeking a country of their own.
Hebrews says the faithful who speak as strangers and pilgrims show that they seek a country of their own, clarified as better and heavenly nearby.
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's native town or homeland, often with overtones of familial belonging and ancestral heritage.
One's native town or homeland, often with overtones of familial belonging and ancestral heritage.
(πατήρ), [in LXX chiefly for מוֹלֶדֶת ;] prop. poët. fern. of πάτριος, of one's fathers; as subst., ἡ π. = πάτρα, fatherland, country, home, native place: Act.18:27, WH, mg., Heb.11:14; of one's own town, Mat.13:54, 57, Mrk.6:1, 4, Luk.4:23-24, Jhn.4:44.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
8 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
fatherland
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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 2 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.
πατρίς is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Patris holds together the gifts and tests of belonging. A hometown provides language, memory, kinship, and recognition, yet the Gospel witnesses show that familiarity can harden into reduction: people think they already know Jesus because they know His household and origin. His saying about a prophet without honor names a recurring social reality, but it is not a shield against questions, correction, or evidence of misconduct.
Hebrews uses the same noun at a wider scale when people of faith confess that they are strangers and seek a country of their own. The chapter directs that longing toward a better, heavenly country God prepares. That hope relativizes every earthly homeland without erasing gratitude, grief, duty, or hospitality within earthly places. Faithful teaching should honor the ache of exile and displacement, resist nationalist claims of spiritual superiority, and refuse to treat migrants as spiritually rootless.
Christian belonging is finally secured by God, which frees communities to love their home without worshiping it and to welcome neighbors whose journeys differ from their own.
Heb.11.14
Patris is a feminine Greek noun related to paternal or ancestral belonging. The Gospel contexts use it for Jesus' native town or hometown, while Hebrews 11 uses it for a country or homeland. Context, not the noun alone, determines the geographic scale and theological emphasis.
Scripture's larger story includes call away from homeland, exile, return, welcome for the foreigner, and hope for a city God prepares. Patris contributes hometown and homeland language to that story, but the broader theology comes from those passages together rather than from this noun alone.