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ἀναβαίνω

to ascend

G305 Strong's Greek
anabaínō Transliteration
/an-ab-ah'-ee-no/ Pronunciation
Usage in the GNT 82 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

“to ascend” is the headline sense of the Greek verb αναβαινω (anabaínō). First canonically at Matthew 3:16, it enters the text early. The Greek New Testament uses it across 78 verses — moderately common. It shares a root with ανα, αναβαλλομαι and αναβιβαζω. See the sense tree, 78-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
arise
Modern gloss
to ascend
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current Thayer scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's G305 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 →

78
distinct verses
The word appears in 78 distinct verses.
10 / 27
NT books
The word appears in 10 of 27 New Testament books.
Matthew 3:16
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Matthew 3:16.
Revelation 20:9
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Revelation 20:9.
#207
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 207 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).

View all 78 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the New Testament

  • Gospels 40 · 51%
  • Acts 19 · 24%
  • Pauline Epistles 7 · 9%
  • General Epistles 0 · 0%
  • Revelation 12 · 15%

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 78 distinct verses.

  • Gospels 40 verses · 51%
  • Lukan (Luke–Acts) 28 verses · 36%
  • Johannine 25 verses · 32%
  • Revelation 12 verses · 15%
  • Pauline corpus 7 verses · 9%

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: Went up 14×, Go up 3×, He ascended 3×
  • American Standard Version: Went up 14×, Ascended 4×, He went up 4×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Went up 15×, Come up 4×, Go up 4×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Went up 12×, Coming up 5×, Going up 5×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders G305 across 87 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Went up” 14×
  • “Go up” 3×
  • “He ascended” 3×
  • “He went up” 3×
  • “Up” 3×
  • “We go up” 3×
  • “Ascended” 2×
  • “Ascended up” 2×
  • “Ascending” 2×
  • “Came” 2×
  • “Come up” 2×
  • “Coming up” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 36 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders G305 across 83 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Went up” 14×
  • “Ascended” 4×
  • “He went up” 4×
  • “Come up” 3×
  • “Coming up” 3×
  • “They went up” 3×
  • “Ascending” 2×
  • “Entered” 2×
  • “Go” 2×
  • “Go up” 2×
  • “Goeth up” 2×
  • “Going up” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 30 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders G305 across 82 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Went up” 15×
  • “Come up” 4×
  • “Go up” 4×
  • “He went up” 4×
  • “Going up” 3×
  • “We are going up” 3×
  • “Ascend” 2×
  • “Ascending” 2×
  • “Grew up” 2×
  • “He ascended” 2×
  • “I went up” 2×
  • “Rises” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 33 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders G305 across 88 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Went up” 12×
  • “Coming up” 5×
  • “Going up” 5×
  • “Having gone up” 5×
  • “Came up” 4×
  • “Come up” 3×
  • “Go up” 3×
  • “Having come up” 3×
  • “He went up” 3×
  • “I went up” 3×
  • “They went up” 3×
  • “We are going up” 3×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 30 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


Senses in Thayer's

The 1 sense 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.

  1. ascend

Word origin

Derived from ανα (aná) (G303) — among.

Part of speech: Verb TDNT: 09:39,9

From G303 and the base of G939 ; to go up (literally or figuratively): - arise ascend (up) climb (go grow rise spring) up come (up).

— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.


Forms in the corpus

The 27 distinct written forms G305 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.

Form Parsing Example Uses
ἀνέβη anébē Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Matthew 3:16 22
ἀνέβησαν anébēsan Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Matthew 13:7 10
ἀναβὰς anabàs Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 15:29 7
ἀναβαίνει anabaínei Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Mark 3:13 4
ἀναβαίνων anabaínōn Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 20:17 4
ἀναβαίνοντα anabaínonta Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine John 6:62 3
ἀναβαῖνον anabaînon Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Neuter Revelation 13:1 3
ἀνέβην anébēn Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular Acts 24:11 3
ἀναβαίνειν anabaínein Verb, Present, Active, Infinitive Acts 15:2 3
ἀναβαίνομεν anabaínomen Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Matthew 20:18 3
ἀναβάντα anabánta Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Accusative, Singular, Masculine Matthew 17:27 2
ἀναβαίνω anabaínō Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular John 7:8 2
ἀναβαινόντων anabainóntōn Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine Luke 2:42 2
ἀνάβα anába Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Singular Revelation 4:1 1
ἀνάβατε anábate Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural Revelation 11:12 1
ἀνάβητε anábēte Verb, Aorist, Active, Imperative, 2nd person, Plural John 7:8 1
ἀνέβαινον anébainon Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Acts 3:1 1
ἀνέβημεν anébēmen Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Acts 21:6 1
ἀναβάντες anabántes Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Luke 5:19 1
ἀναβάντων anabántōn Verb, Aorist, Active, Participle, Genitive, Plural, Masculine Matthew 14:32 1
ἀναβέβηκα anabébēka Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Singular John 20:17 1
ἀναβέβηκεν anabébēken Verb, Perfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular John 3:13 1
ἀναβήσεται anabḗsetai Verb, Future, Middle deponent, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular Romans 10:6 1
ἀναβαίνοντας anabaínontas Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Accusative, Plural, Masculine John 1:52 1
ἀναβαίνοντες anabaínontes Verb, Present, Active, Participle, Nominative, Plural, Masculine Mark 10:32 1
ἀναβαίνουσιν anabaínousin Verb, Present, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural Luke 24:38 1
ἀνεβαίνομεν anebaínomen Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 1st person, Plural Acts 21:15 1

Same root — word family

Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G305, 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

+51 more words share this root (not shown).

Derived from this word

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 78 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint usage

The same Greek word αναβαινω appears 581 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 526 verses in 35 books.

581
LXX occurrences
Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
526
verses
Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
35 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 35 of the 39 Old Testament books.

Sample Septuagint occurrences

Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)

Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G305) appears in the Greek Septuagint — showing the first 50 of 526. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.

These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G305) in the Septuagint — not a translation of any one Hebrew word. The store carries no word-level Hebrew↔Greek alignment, so no Hebrew original is asserted here. Counts come from the recovered LXX Strong's tagging — high-frequency vocabulary is well covered, while rare or late forms may be untagged — so they reflect tagged occurrences and may slightly undercount.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.