ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Lexicon

G2962 - kyrios

Strong's: G2962 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: koo'-ree-os Part of speech: masculine noun LXX equivalents: H3068 - YHWH (the Tetragrammaton, almost universally rendered kyrios in LXX); also אֲדוֹן (adon, H113) and אֲדֹנָי (adonai, H136). NT occurrences: ~717

Semantic range (Thayer / BDAG)

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  1. Master, owner, one having power and authority, the literal social sense (master of slaves, owner of property, head of household).
  2. Sir, polite address, common honorific in Greek koine (cf. John 4:11 the Samaritan woman addressing Jesus).
  3. The Roman emperor / civic ruler, formal title (e.g., Acts 25:26).
  4. The God of the Hebrew Bible (LXX usage), substituting for the unspeakable Tetragrammaton; this is the dominant biblical-theological sense.
  5. The Lord Jesus Christ, Christological appropriation that identifies Jesus with YHWH.

Theological force, Jesus is kyrios

The single most concentrated piece of NT Christology hangs on this word. Three load-bearing facts:

  1. The pre-Christian LXX rendered YHWH as kyrios, established for ~250 years before the NT was written.
  2. NT writers freely apply OT YHWH-passages to Jesus, using the same word kyrios. Examples:
  1. The earliest Christian confession is "Jesus is kyrios" (Romans 10:9; Philippians 2:11; 1 Corinthians 12:3). This is not "Jesus is master", in the LXX-saturated context of first-century Jewish Christianity, this confession identifies Jesus with YHWH.

The shift between senses (5) and (4) happens silently across the NT, the same word, but the same God. Larry Hurtado (Lord Jesus Christ, 2003), Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the God of Israel, 2008), and Gordon Fee (Pauline Christology, 2007) develop this kyrios-Christology pattern as the foundational claim of NT theology.

Notable verses

Christ as kyrios in the highest sense

  • John 20.28, Thomas: ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου, "My Lord and my God"
  • Romans 10:9, "if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord (kyrios)"
  • Romans 10.13, "WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED" (Joel 2:32 applied to Jesus)
  • Philippians 2:9-11, "every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is kyrios"
  • 1 Corinthians 8:6, "for us there is one God, the Father… and one Lord, Jesus Christ"
  • 1 Corinthians 12:3, "no one can say 'Jesus is kyrios' except by the Holy Spirit"
  • Acts 2:36, "God has made Him both kyrios and Christos"
  • Acts 10:36, "He is kyrios of all"

Kyrios applied to Father / God

  • Matthew 11:25, "Father, kyrios of heaven and earth"
  • Acts 4:24, "kyrios, You who made the heaven and the earth"

Kyrios as polite address (lower sense)

  • John 4:11, Samaritan woman: "kyrie, You have nothing to draw with" (Sir / Lord, ambiguous)
  • Matthew 13:27, "kyrie, did You not sow good seed?" (master of estate)

LXX background, kyrios = YHWH

Patristic / scholarly note

The early creeds make Kyrios the central Christological confession. The Apostles' Creed: "Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord." The Nicene Creed: "and in one Lord Jesus Christ." Tertullian (Against Praxeas 13) and Athanasius use kyrios throughout to defend Christ's deity. Larry Hurtado's One God, One Lord (1988) and Lord Jesus Christ (2003) trace the historical emergence of kyrios-devotion to Jesus as the centerpiece of earliest Christian worship, already in place within 20 years of the resurrection. Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel develops the "divine identity" Christology in which the NT identifies Jesus with YHWH (rather than as a second deity), preserving Jewish monotheism.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here.

See also