βάπτισμα
immersion
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.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter 12 times (60%)
- Noun, Nominative, Singular, Neuter 5 times (25%)
- Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter 2 times (10%)
- Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter 1 time (5%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (Robinson–Tischendorf, public domain), counted across 20 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where G908 appears — 20 distinct verses across 8 books. 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.
Matthew 2 verses
- Matthew 3:7 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, he said to them, "You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
- Matthew 21:25 βάπτισμα n nom sg neut The baptism of John, where was it from? From heaven or from men?" They reasoned with themselves, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will ask us, 'Why then did you not believe him?'
Mark 4 verses
- Mark 1:4 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching the baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins.
- Mark 10:38 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut But Jesus said to them, "You don't know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"
- Mark 10:39 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut They said to him, "We are able." Jesus said to them, "You shall indeed drink the cup that I drink, and you shall be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with;
- Mark 11:30 βάπτισμα n nom sg neut The baptism of John -- was it from heaven, or from men? Answer me."
Luke 4 verses
- Luke 3:3 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut He came into all the region around the Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for remission of sins.
- Luke 7:29 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut When all the people and the tax collectors heard this, they declared God to be just, having been baptized with John's baptism.
- Luke 12:50 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished!
- Luke 20:4 βάπτισμα n nom sg neut the baptism of John, was it from heaven, or from men?"
Acts 6 verses
- Acts 1:22 βαπτίσματος n gen sg neut beginning from the baptism of John, to the day that he was received up from us, of these one must become a witness with us of his resurrection."
- Acts 10:37 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut that spoken word you yourselves know, which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached;
- Acts 13:24 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut before his coming, when John had first preached the baptism of repentance to Israel.
- Acts 18:25 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, although he knew only the baptism of John.
- Acts 19:3 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut He said, "Into what then were you baptized?" They said, "Into John's baptism."
- Acts 19:4 βάπτισμα n acc sg neut Paul said, "John indeed baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying to the people that they should believe in the one who would come after him, that is, in Jesus."
Romans 1 verse
Ephesians 1 verse
Colossians 1 verse
1 Peter 1 verse
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.
βαπτισμα — transliterated báptisma — is a Greek noun carrying the sense “immersion.” Its earliest occurrence is Matthew 3:7. It appears 20 verses across 8 books of the Greek New Testament, among its uncommon vocabulary. More than a quarter of its appearances fall in Acts. It shares a root with βαπτιζω, βαπτισμος and Βαπτιστης. 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 G908 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 →
- 20
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 20 distinct verses.
- 8 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 8 of 27 New Testament books.
- #622
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Greek words (rank 622 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 20 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 20 distinct verses.
- Gospels 10 verses · 50%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 10 verses · 50%
- Pauline corpus 3 verses · 15%
- General (Catholic) Epistles 1 verse · 5%
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: Baptism 22×
- American Standard Version: Baptism 19×
- Berean Standard Bible: Baptism 18×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Baptism 19×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G908 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G908 across 20 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G908 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G908 across 19 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.
- immersion, submersion
Word origin
Derived from βαπτιζω (baptízō) (G907) — to baptize.
From G907 ; baptism (technically or figuratively): - baptism.
— Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1890), public domain.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G908 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| βάπτισμα báptisma | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Neuter | Matthew 3:7 | 17 |
| βαπτίσματος baptísmatos | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Neuter | Acts 1:22 | 2 |
| βαπτίσματι baptísmati | Noun, Dative, Singular, Neuter | Colossians 2:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G908, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
