ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Lexicon

G1484 - ethnos

ethnos, ἔθνος, ethne, ethnē, G1484, nation, nations, Gentile, Gentiles, heathen, all nations

Strong's: G1484 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: eth'-nos Part of speech: noun, neuter Root: probably from ethō (G1486, "to be accustomed"), so a people held together by shared custom and descent. English "ethnic" comes from it NT occurrences: 152 verses in the Strong's-tagged KJV, with 164 tags. The KJV word carrying the tag is "Gentiles" 93 times, "nations" 37, "nation" 27, "heathen" 5 and "people" 2 (measured) OT counterpart: Hebrew goy (H1471), 511 verses in the Strong's-tagged KJV, rendered "nations" 265, "heathen" 143, "nation" 109, "Gentiles" 30, "people" 11 (measured)

Ethnos is the word behind both "nation" and "Gentile". The same Greek noun that sends the apostles to "all the nations" in Matthew 28:19 names the "Gentiles" whom Paul was sent to and whose admission the council of Acts 15 settled. Reading the English, it is easy to miss that these are one word, and a good deal of argument about who the gospel is for turns on keeping them together.

Semantic range

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  1. A nation or people group, neutrally. "For nation shall rise against nation" (Matthew 24:7); Jews "from every nation under heaven" (Acts 2:5); "he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth" (Acts 17:26).
  2. Israel as a nation. The word is not reserved for outsiders. Caiaphas "prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad" (John 11:51-52). The same pair of verses uses ethnos for Israel and then reaches past it.
  3. "The nations" as everyone outside Israel, the Gentiles. This is the dominant use, and the reason the KJV says "Gentiles" 93 times. "A light for revelation to the Gentiles, And the glory of thy people Israel" (Luke 2:32); "once ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision" (Ephesians 2:11).
  4. The Gentiles as a moral and religious category, pagans. "For after all these things do the Gentiles seek" (Matthew 6:32); Paul reminds the Corinthians of the time "when ye were Gentiles" and were led away to idols (1 Corinthians 12:2). Here the word means a way of life without the knowledge of God, which is why a believer from the nations can be said to have stopped being one.
  5. The church as a new nation. "But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession" (1 Peter 2:9); the kingdom "shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matthew 21:43).

The word therefore does not carry a fixed meaning such as "non-Jew" or "foreign race". It names a people, and the context says which people and in what respect.

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Ethnos and laos: a people taken out of the nations

At the Jerusalem council James sums up Peter's report: "Symeon hath rehearsed how first God visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name" (Acts 15:14). The tagging shows two different nouns, ethnos for "Gentiles" and laos (G2992) for "a people". Laos is the ordinary word for Israel as the people of God, as in Simeon's "thy people Israel" (Luke 2:32). James's sentence says that God is now forming that kind of people out of the nations. The Gentiles do not stop being from the nations; they are gathered into the people of God without becoming Jews first. See Israel and the Church.

From "go not" to "all the nations"

Matthew records two commissions, and the contrast is deliberate.

  • The first sending, restricted. "Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans" (Matthew 10:5); compare Matthew 15:24.
  • The last sending, unrestricted. "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). The tagged words are pas (G3956, "all") with ethnos, and the verb behind "make disciples" (KJV "teach") is mathēteuō (G3100).

The same Gospel that records the restriction records its lifting, and it had already pointed ahead: "And in his name shall the Gentiles hope" (Matthew 12:21, quoting Isaiah), and "this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations" (Matthew 24:14). Tertullian made the same observation: Jesus had "not yet" charged the apostles to go into the way of the Gentiles, and "it is only at the last that He instructs them to 'go and teach all nations, and baptize them'" (ANF 3, PDF p. 198). See Matthew 28.18-20 and Jesus Came Only for Israel Objection Defeater.

The Gentiles in Paul

Paul calls himself "an apostle of Gentiles" (Romans 11:13), and ethnos is the word through which he states the scope of the gospel.

  • One God of both. "Or is God the God of Jews only? is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yea, of Gentiles also" (Romans 3:29). Monotheism itself is the argument: if there is one God, he cannot be the God of one nation only.
  • The promise to Abraham was already about the nations. "And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all the nations be blessed" (Galatians 3:8). The Hebrew of Genesis 18:18 has goy, the Old Testament counterpart, for "all the nations of the earth". Paul's point is that Gentile inclusion was in the covenant from the start, not a later patch. "That upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:14).
  • Fellow-heirs, not second class. "To wit, that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (Ephesians 3:6). The wall between the two is broken down (Ephesians 2:14).
  • Israel not discarded. In the same chapter where he magnifies his Gentile ministry, Paul insists that Israel's stumbling is not final (Romans 11:11; Romans 11:25; Romans 11:1-2).

Acts 15: the council that decided the question

The word occurs in seven verses of Acts 15 in the Strong's-tagged KJV (15:3, 7, 12, 14, 17, 19, 23, measured), which makes the chapter the densest cluster in Acts. The question before the council (Acts 15.1-29; see Jerusalem Council) was whether Gentile believers had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be saved. The answer turned on three things:

  1. What God had already done. Peter recalls that God chose "that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel, and believe" (15:7); Paul and Barnabas report the signs God worked "among the Gentiles" (15:12).
  2. What the prophets had said. James quotes Amos: "That the residue of men may seek after the Lord, And all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called" (Acts 15:17; see Acts 15.16-17 and Amos 9.11-12).
  3. The ruling. "Wherefore my judgment is, that we trouble not them that from among the Gentiles turn to God" (Acts 15:19).

The council did not make Gentiles into Jews. It recognised them as Gentiles who had turned to God, and asked them to avoid the practices that would make table fellowship with Jewish believers impossible.

Where the word decides a debate

  • "Gentiles cannot be saved" and "the nations means the scattered tribes of Israel." Some Hebrew Israelite teachers read ethnos in Matthew 28:19 as the dispersed Israelites living among other peoples. The word's own usage resists that. In Luke 2:32 the Gentiles are set over against "thy people Israel"; in Ephesians 2:11 they are "Uncircumcision" as distinct from "Circumcision"; in Acts 15 the whole debate is whether uncircumcised non-Israelites must become law-keepers. If ethnos meant Israelites, the council would have had nothing to decide. See Gentiles Cannot Be Saved Objection Defeater, Mosaic Law Binding for True Israelites Objection Defeater and Hebrew Israelites.
  • "Christianity is a Western or white religion." The end the New Testament describes is "a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and tongues" (Revelation 7:9). The commission is to every ethnos; no one people owns it. See Mission Geography (Acts 1-8).
  • Race and the unity of humanity. "He made of one every nation of men" (Acts 17:26) puts every ethnos under one origin and one Creator, which undercuts any theology that ranks peoples by descent.

Notable verses

Commission

Paul and the Gentiles

Acts

The nations at the end

Patristic note

  • Tertullian on the two commissions: only "at the last" did Jesus send the apostles to "go and teach all nations" (ANF 3, PDF p. 198). Elsewhere he says Jesus chose the twelve and "destined [them] to be the teachers of the nations" (ANF 3, PDF p. 202).
  • Origen answers Celsus by pointing to the providence that united the peoples under Augustus, so that it would not be "more difficult for the apostles of Jesus to accomplish the task enjoined upon them by their Master, when He said, 'Go and teach all nations'" (Against Celsus, ANF 4, PDF p. 329).
  • Irenaeus cites the commission as the Lord "giving to the disciples the power of regeneration into God" (Against Heresies, ANF 1, PDF p. 355).

See also