ἀρχιερεύς
high priest
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
See every Nominative-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
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one.
- Singular
- One.
12 verses where G749 appears in the Nominative case in the Book of John. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
John
- John 7:32 ἀρχιερεῖς n nom pl masc The Pharisees heard the multitude murmuring these things concerning him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.
- John 11:47 ἀρχιερεῖς n nom pl masc The chief priests therefore and the Pharisees gathered a council, and said, "What are we doing? For this man does many signs.
- John 11:49 ἀρχιερεὺς n nom sg masc But a certain one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all,
- John 11:51 ἀρχιερεὺς n nom sg masc Now he didn't say this of himself, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation,
- John 11:57 ἀρχιερεῖς n nom pl masc Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had commanded that if anyone knew where he was, he should report it, that they might seize him.
- John 12:10 ἀρχιερεῖς n nom pl masc But the chief priests conspired to put Lazarus to death also,
- John 18:13 ἀρχιερεὺς n nom sg masc and led him to Annas first, for he was father-in-law to Caiaphas, who was high priest that year.
- John 18:19 ἀρχιερεὺς n nom sg masc The high priest therefore asked Jesus about his disciples, and about his teaching.
- John 18:35 ἀρχιερεῖς n nom pl masc Pilate answered, "I'm not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered you to me. What have you done?"
- John 19:6 ἀρχιερεῖς n nom pl masc When therefore the chief priests and the officers saw him, they shouted, saying, "Crucify! Crucify!" Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves, and crucify him, for I find no basis for a charge against him."
- John 19:15 ἀρχιερεῖς n nom pl masc They cried out, "Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar!"
- John 19:21 ἀρχιερεῖς n nom pl masc The chief priests of the Jews therefore said to Pilate, "Don't write, 'The King of the Jews,' but, 'he said, I am King of the Jews.'"
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, αρχιερευς (archiereús) means “high priest.” First canonically at Matthew 2:4, it enters the text early. It appears 118 verses across 6 books of the Greek New Testament, among its common vocabulary. It shares a root with αρχη, αρχαιος and αρχηγος. 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 G749 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 →
- 118
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 118 distinct verses.
- 6 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 6 of 27 New Testament books.
- #136
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Greek words (rank 136 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 118 occurrences in the concordance →
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 118 distinct verses.
- Gospels 79 verses · 67%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 36 verses · 31%
- Johannine 20 verses · 17%
- Hebrews 17 verses · 14%
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: Chief priests 64×, High priest 50×, High priest's 4×
- American Standard Version: Chief priests 60×, High priest 52×, Chief priest 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Chief priests 64×, High priest 52×, High priesthood 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Chief priests 64×, High priest 53×, A 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G749 across 123 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G749 across 121 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 G749 across 122 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 G749 across 125 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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.
- chief priest, high priest
Word origin
Derived from αρχη (archḗ) (G746) — beginning.
Forms in the corpus
The 8 distinct written forms G749 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ἀρχιερεῖς archiereîs | Noun, Nominative, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 21:15 | 49 |
| ἀρχιερεὺς archiereùs | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 26:62 | 24 |
| ἀρχιερέως archieréōs | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 26:3 | 16 |
| ἀρχιερέων archieréōn | Noun, Genitive, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 16:21 | 10 |
| ἀρχιερέα archieréa | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Matthew 26:57 | 9 |
| ἀρχιερεῦσιν archiereûsin | Noun, Dative, Plural, Masculine | Matthew 20:18 | 6 |
| ἀρχιερεύς archiereús | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 7:1 | 4 |
| ἀρχιερεῖ archiereî | Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine | John 18:15 | 3 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G749, 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
- αρχαιος archaîos G744 original
- αρχηγος archēgós G747 leader
- αρχιερατικος archieratikós G748 high priestly
- αρχιποιμην archipoímēn G750 chief shepherd
- αρχισυναγωγος archisynágōgos G752 synagogue ruler
- αρχιτεκτων architéktōn G753 architect
- αρχιτελωνης architelṓnēs G754 chief tax collector
- αρχιτρικλινος architríklinos G755 table master
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 11 — 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.
Septuagint usage
The same Greek word αρχιερευς appears 3 times in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), across 3 verses in 2 books.
- 3
- LXX occurrences
- Tagged occurrences of this Greek word in the Septuagint.
- 3
- verses
- Distinct Septuagint verses containing this word.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of the 39 Old Testament books.
Sample Septuagint occurrences
- Leviticus 4:3 ἀρχιερεύς
- Joshua 22:13 ἀρχιερεύς
Septuagint occurrences (same lexeme)
Every verse where the same Strong’s number (G749) 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.
- Leviticus 4:3 ἀρχιερεύς if the anointed priest sins so as to bring guilt on the people, then let him offer for his sin, which he has sinned, a young bull without blemish to Yahweh for a sin offering.
- Joshua 22:13 ἀρχιερεύς The children of Israel sent to the children of Reuben, and to the children of Gad, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh, into the land of Gilead, Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest,
- Joshua 24:33 ἀρχιερεύς Eleazar the son of Aaron died; and they buried him in the hill of Phinehas his son, which was given him in the hill-country of Ephraim.
These are occurrences of the same Greek lexeme (G749) 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.
