προΰπάρχω
to exist before
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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Tense
- Imperfect
- Continuous or repeated action in past time (“was writing”).
Voice
- Active
- The subject performs the action.
Mood
- Indicative
- States a fact or asks a factual question (the mood of reality).
Person
- 3rd person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where G4391 appears in the Book of Acts — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Acts
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.
The Greek verb προυπαρχω centers on the idea of “to exist before.” It is rare — just 2 verses in the entire Greek New Testament. The word gravitates to Luke (50%), then Acts. Its earliest occurrence is Luke 23:12. It shares a root with προ, πορρω and πρηνης. Dig into 2-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4391 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: Before 1×, Beforetime 1×
- American Standard Version: Before 1×, Beforetime 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Before this 1×, Prior to that time 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Previously 1×, Was already 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4391 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4391 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4391 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4391 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- to be before, exist previously
Word origin
Derived from προ (pró) (G4253) — before.
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms G4391 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that tense’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| προϋπῆρχεν proÿpē̂rchen | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular | Acts 8:9 | 1 |
| προϋπῆρχον proÿpē̂rchon | Verb, Imperfect, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Plural | Luke 23:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G4391, 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
- πορρω pórrhō G4206 far
- πρηνης prēnḗs G4248 headlong
- πριν prín G4250 before
- προαγω proágō G4254 to lead forward
- προαιρεομαι proairéomai G4255 to choose before
- προαιτιαομαι proaitiáomai G4256 to charge previously
- προακουω proakoúō G4257 to hear before
- προαμαρτανω proamartánō G4258 to sin before
- προαυλιον proaúlion G4259 porch
- προβαινω probaínō G4260 to go forward
- προβαλλω probállō G4261 to throw forward
- προβιβαζω probibázō G4264 to drag forward
- προβλεπω problépō G4265 to foresee
- προγινομαι progínomai G4266 to come before
- προγινωσκω proginṓskō G4267 to foreknow
- προγραφω prográphō G4270 to write before
- προδηλος pródēlos G4271 manifest
- προδιδωμι prodídōmi G4272 to give before
- προειδω proeídō G4275 to foresee
- προελπιζω proelpízō G4276 to hope before
- προεπω proépō G4277 to say before
- προεναρχομαι proenárchomai G4278 to begin before
- προεπαγγελλομαι proepangéllomai G4279 to promise before
- προερεω proeréō G4280 to say before
+47 more words share this root (not shown).
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 74 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
