Σίλας
Silas
Thayer's lists 2 entries for ‘Silas’ 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).
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine 6 times (50%)
- Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine 4 times (33%)
- Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine 2 times (17%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 12 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G4609 appears — 12 distinct verses across 1 book. 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 12 verses
- Acts 15:22 Σιλᾶν n acc sg masc Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole assembly, to choose men out of their company, and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas: Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, chief men among the brothers.
- Acts 15:27 Σιλᾶν n acc sg masc We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who themselves will also tell you the same things by word of mouth.
- Acts 15:32 Σιλᾶς n nom sg masc Judas and Silas, also being prophets themselves, encouraged the brothers with many words, and strengthened them.
- Acts 15:40 Σιλᾶν n acc sg masc but Paul chose Silas, and went out, being commended by the brothers to the grace of God.
- Acts 16:19 Σιλᾶν n acc sg masc But when her masters saw that the hope of their gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas, and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers.
- Acts 16:25 Σιλᾶς n nom sg masc But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
- Acts 16:29 Σιλᾷ n dat sg masc He called for lights and sprang in, and, fell down trembling before Paul and Silas,
- Acts 17:4 Σιλᾷ n dat sg masc Some of them were persuaded, and joined Paul and Silas, of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and not a few of the chief women.
- Acts 17:10 Σιλᾶν n acc sg masc The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Beroea. When they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue.
- Acts 17:14 Σιλᾶς n nom sg masc Then the brothers immediately sent out Paul to go as far as to the sea, and Silas and Timothy still stayed there.
- Acts 17:15 Σιλᾶν n acc sg masc But those who escorted Paul brought him as far as Athens. Receiving a commandment to Silas and Timothy that they should come to him very quickly, they departed.
- Acts 18:5 Σιλᾶς n nom sg masc But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul was compelled by the Spirit, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.
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.
Σιλας (Sílas) is a Greek name most often rendered “Silas.” It clusters heavily in Acts, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. With 12 verses in 1 book, it is an uncommon word in the Greek New Testament. It first appears in Acts 15:22. The sections below give every occurrence and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G4609 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 1 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 1 of 27 New Testament books.
- #904
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 904 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 12 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Acts 12 verses 100%
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 12 distinct verses.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 12 verses · 100%
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: Silas 13×
- American Standard Version: Silas 10×, Deuteronomy silas 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Silas 12×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Silas 13×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G4609 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G4609 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G4609 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G4609 across 13 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.
- Silas = "woody"
- a Roman citizen, the companion of the apostle Paul on several of his missionary journeys
Word origin
Derived from Σιλουανος (Silouanós) (G4610) — Silvanus.
Contraction for G4610 ; Silas a Christian : - Silas.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G4609 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Σιλᾶν Silân | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 15:22 | 6 |
| Σιλᾶς Silâs | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 15:32 | 4 |
| Σιλᾷ Silâ | Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 16:29 | 2 |
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Silas). 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
Wood, a prominent member of the church at Jerusalem; also called Silvanus. He and Judas, surnamed Barsabas, were chosen by the church there to accompany Paul and Barnabas on their return to Antioch from the council of the apostles and elders (Acts 15:22), as bearers of the decree adopted by the council. He assisted Paul there in his evangelistic labours, and was also chosen by him to be his companion on his second missionary tour (Acts 16:19-24). He is referred to in the epistles under the name of Silvanus (2 Cor. 1:19; 1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:1; 1 Pet. 5:12). There is no record of the time or place of his death.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(contracted form of Silvanus, woody), an eminent member of the early Christian Church, described under that name in the Acts but as Silvanus in St. Paul's epistles. He first appears as one of the leaders of the church at Jerusalem (Acts 15:22) holding the office of an inspired teacher. (Acts 15:32) His name, derived from the Latin silva, "wood," betokens him a Hellenistic Jew, and he appears to have been a Roman citizen. (Acts 16:37) He was appointed as a delegate to accompany Paul and Barnabas on their return to Antioch with the decree of the Council of Jerusalem. (Acts 15:22,32) Having accomplished this mission, he returned to Jerusalem. (Acts 15:33) He must, however, have immediately revisited Antioch, for we find him selected by St. Paul as the companion of his second missionary journey. (Acts 15:40; Acts 17:10) At Berea he was left behind with Timothy while St. Paul proceeded to Athens, (Acts 17:14) and we hear nothing more of his movements until he rejoined the apostle at Corinth. (Acts 18:5) His presence at Corinth is several times noticed. (2 Corinthians 1:19; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1) Whether he was the Silvanus who conveyed St. Peter's first epistle to Asia Minor, (1 Peter 5:12) is doubtful the probabilities are in favor of the identity. A tradition of very slight authority represents Silas to have become bishop of Corinth.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
three, or the third
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
