Θεόφιλος
Theophilus
Thayer's lists 2 entries for ‘Theophilus’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Vocative
- The case of direct address (“O Lord”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where G2321 appears — 2 distinct verses across 2 books. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Greek form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Greek New Testament; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences of this word are not indexed here.
Luke 1 verse
Acts 1 verse
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
At its core, Θεοφιλος (Theóphilos) means “Theophilus.” It occurs a mere 2 verses across Scripture. The word gravitates to Luke (50%), then Acts. First canonically at Luke 1:3, it enters the text early. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G2321 catalogs a Greek word from the Greek New Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Greek New Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 2 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 2 of 27 New Testament books.
- #2,678
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Greek words (rank 2,678 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Some books belong to more than one corpus (Luke is in both the Gospels and the Lukan corpus, and so on), so these shares overlap and need not total 100%. Each figure is a share of the word’s 2 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 100%
- Gospels 1 verse · 50%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Theophilus 2×
- American Standard Version: Theophilus 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Theophilus 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Theophilus 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G2321 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G2321 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G2321 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G2321 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in Thayer's
The 2 senses Thayer's distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- Theophilus = "friend of God"
- the person to whom Luke addressed his Gospel and the book of Acts
Word origin
Derived from θεος (theós) (G2316) — God.
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G2321, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
- θεα theá G2299 goddess
- θεοδιδακτος theodídaktos G2312 taught of God
- θεομαχος theomáchos G2314 resisting God
- θεοπνευστος theópneustos G2315 inspired by God
- θεοσεβης theosebḗs G2318 pious
- θεοστυγης theostygḗs G2319 hateful to God
- θεοτης theótēs G2320 deity
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 10 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Theophilus). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Lover of God, a Christian, probably a Roman, to whom Luke dedicated both his Gospel (Luke 1:3) and the Acts of the Apostles (1:1). Nothing beyond this is known of him. From the fact that Luke applies to him the title "most excellent", the same title Paul uses in addressing Felix (Acts 23:26; 24:3) and Festus (26:25), it has been concluded that Theophilus was a person of rank, perhaps a Roman officer.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(friend of God) the person to whom St. Luke inscribes his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1) From the honorable epithet applied to him in (Luke 1:3) it has been argued with much probability that he was a person in high official position. All that can be conjectured with any degree of safety concerning him comes to this, that he was a Gentile of rank and consideration who came under the influence of St. Luke or under that of St. Paul at Rome, and was converted to the Christian faith.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
friend of God
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
