μυστήριον
mystery
also: hidden thing, secret fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Accusative-case word in the Greek New Testament →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Gender
- Neuter
- Grammatically neuter.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one.
Every verse where G3466 appears in the Book of 1 Timothy — 2 distinct verses. 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.
1 Timothy
- 1 Timothy 3:9 μυστήριον n acc sg neut holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience.
- 1 Timothy 3:16 μυστήριον n nom sg neut Without controversy, the mystery of godliness is great: God was revealed in the flesh, Justified in the spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the nations, Believed on in the world, And received up in glory.
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.
μυστηριον (mystḗrion) is a Greek noun most often rendered “mystery.” It first appears in Matthew 13:11. The Greek New Testament uses it across 27 verses — moderately common. Ranging over 2 senses, its meaning includes “hidden thing” and “secret”. Sharing its root, it stands alongside μυεω, μυωπαζω and μωρος. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G3466 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 →
- 27
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 27 distinct verses.
- 10 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 10 of 27 New Testament books.
- #500
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 500 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 27 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Ephesians 6 verses 22%
- 1 Corinthians 5 verses 19%
- Colossians 4 verses 15%
By section of the New Testament
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 27 distinct verses.
- Pauline corpus 20 verses · 74%
- Johannine 4 verses · 15%
- Revelation 4 verses · 15%
- Gospels 3 verses · 11%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 1 verse · 4%
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: Mystery 22×, Mysteries 5×
- American Standard Version: Mystery 22×, Mysteries 5×
- Berean Standard Bible: Mystery 20×, Mysteries 5×, Mysterious 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Mystery 23×, Mysteries 5×, Of 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G3466 across 27 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G3466 across 27 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G3466 across 27 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G3466 across 30 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.
- hidden thing, secret, mystery
- in rabbinic writings, it denotes the mystic or hidden sense
Word origin
Origin: from a derivative of muo (to shut the mouth)
From a derivative of μύω muō (to shut the mouth); a secret or mystery (through the idea of silence imposed by initiation into religious rites): - mystery.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 5 distinct written forms G3466 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| μυστήριον mystḗrion | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter | Romans 11:25 | 16 |
| μυστήρια mystḗria | Noun, Accusative, Plural, Neuter | Matthew 13:11 | 4 |
| μυστηρίου mystēríou | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter | Romans 16:25 | 4 |
| μυστηρίῳ mystēríō | Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter | 1 Corinthians 2:7 | 2 |
| μυστηρίων mystēríōn | Noun, Genitive, Plural, Neuter | 1 Corinthians 4:1 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G3466, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word μυστηριον appears 8 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 7 verses in 1 book.
- 8
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 7
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Daniel 2:18 μυστήριον
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G3466) appears in the Greek Septuagint. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context; the Greek form is the matched word — the English is not keyword-highlighted.
- Daniel 2:18 μυστήριον that they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret; that Daniel and his companions should nor perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
- Daniel 2:19 μυστήριον Then was the secret revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.
- Daniel 2:27 μυστήριον Daniel answered before the king, and said, The secret which the king has demanded can neither wise men, enchanters, magicians, nor soothsayers, show to the king;
- Daniel 2:28 μυστήριον but there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has made known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head on your bed, are these:
- Daniel 2:29 μυστήριον as for you, O king, your thoughts came [into your mind] on your bed, what should happen hereafter; and he who reveals secrets has made known to you what shall happen.
- Daniel 2:30 μυστήριον But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but to the intent that the interpretation may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart.
- Daniel 2:47 μυστήριον The king answered to Daniel, and said, Of a truth your God is the God of gods, and the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing you have been able to reveal this secret.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G3466) 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.
