Βαρνάβας
Barnabas
Thayer's lists 2 entries for ‘Barnabas’ fuller range ↓
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
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Case
- Nominative
- The case of the subject (and the predicate nominative).
- Accusative
- The case of the direct object and of extent.
- Dative
- The case of the indirect object, means, or location — “to / for / with / in.”
- Genitive
- The case of source, possession, or “of” — answers “whose / from what.”
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where G921 appears in the Book of Colossians — 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.
Colossians
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.
Βαρναβας — transliterated Barnábas — is a Greek name carrying the sense “Barnabas.” Its uses cluster heavily in Acts (81% of all occurrences). With 27 verses in 4 books, it is a moderately common word in the Greek New Testament. It first appears in Acts 4:36. See 27-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's G921 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.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #485
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Greek words (rank 485 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 27 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Acts 22 verses 81%
- Galatians 3 verses 11%
- 1 Corinthians 1 verse 4%
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.
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 22 verses · 81%
- Pauline corpus 5 verses · 19%
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: Barnabas 29×
- American Standard Version: Barnabas 27×
- Berean Standard Bible: Barnabas 27×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Barnabas 28×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G921 across 29 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G921 across 28 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 G921 across 27 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G921 across 28 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.
- Barnabas = "son of rest"
- the surname of Joses or Joseph…
Word origin
Derived from בר (bar) (H1247) — son.
Forms in the corpus
The 7 distinct written forms G921 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Βαρναβᾶς Barnabâs | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 4:36 | 9 |
| Βαρναβᾶν Barnabân | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 11:22 | 6 |
| Βαρναβᾷ Barnabâ | Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 13:43 | 5 |
| Βαρναβᾶ Barnabâ | Noun, Genitive, Singular, Masculine | Acts 11:30 | 4 |
| Βαρνάβαν Barnában | Noun, Accusative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 13:2 | 2 |
| Βαρνάβας Barnábas | Noun, Nominative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 12:25 | 1 |
| Βαρνάβᾳ Barnába | Noun, Dative, Singular, Masculine | Acts 15:2 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G921, 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
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- Βαραββας Barabbâs G912 Barabbas
- Βαρθολομαιος Bartholomaîos G918 Bartholomew
- Βαριησους Bariēsoûs G919 Bar-Jesus
- Βαριωνας Bariōnâs G920 Cephas
- Βαρσαβας Barsabâs G923 Barsabas
- Βαρτιμαιος Bartimaîos G924 Bartimaeus
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 9 — not the complete family. 6 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Barnabas). 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
Son of consolation, the surname of Joses, a Levite (Acts 4:36). His name stands first on the list of prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch (13:1). Luke speaks of him as a "good man" (11:24). He was born of Jewish parents of the tribe of Levi. He was a native of Cyprus, where he had a possession of land (Acts 4:36, 37), which he sold. His personal appearance is supposed to have been dignified and commanding (Acts 14:11, 12). When Paul returned to Jerusalem after his conversion, Barnabas took him and introduced him to the apostles (9:27). They had probably been companions as students in the school of Gamaliel.
The prosperity of the church at Antioch led the apostles and brethren at Jerusalem to send Barnabas thither to superintend the movement. He found the work so extensive and weighty that he went to Tarsus in search of Saul to assist him. Saul returned with him to Antioch and laboured with him for a whole year (Acts 11:25, 26). The two were at the end of this period sent up to Jerusalem with the contributions the church at Antioch had made for the poorer brethren there (11:28-30). Shortly after they returned, bringing John Mark with them, they were appointed as missionaries to the heathen world, and in this capacity visited Cyprus and some of the principal cities of Asia Minor (Acts 13:14). Returning from this first missionary journey to Antioch, they were again sent up to Jerusalem to consult with the church there regarding the relation of Gentiles to the church (Acts 15:2: Gal. 2:1). This matter having been settled, they returned again to Antioch, bringing the decree of the council as the rule by which Gentiles were to be admitted into the church.
When about to set forth on a second missionary journey, a dispute arose between Saul and Barnabas as to the propriety of taking John Mark with them again. The dispute ended by Saul and Barnabas taking separate routes. Saul took Silas as his companion, and journeyed through Syria and Cilicia; while Barnabas took his nephew John Mark, and visited Cyprus (Acts 15:36-41). Barnabas is not again mentioned by Luke in the Acts.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(son of consolation or comfort) a name given by the apostles, (Acts 4:36) to Joseph (or Jose), a Levite of the island of Cyprus, who was early a disciple of Christ. In (Acts 9:27) we find him introducing the newly-converted Saul to the apostles at Jerusalem. Barnabas was sent to Jerusalem, (Acts 11:19-26) and went to Tarsus to seek Saul, as one specially raised up to preach to the Gentiles. (Acts 26:17) He brought him to Antioch, and was sent with him to Jerusalem. (Acts 11:30) On their return, they were ordained by the church for the missionary work, (Acts 13:2) and sent forth (A.D. 45). From this time Barnabas and Paul enjoy the title and dignity of apostles. Their first missionary journey is related in (Acts 13:14) Returning to Antioch (A.D. 47 or 48), they were sent (A.D. 50), with some others, to Jerusalem. (Acts 15:1,36) Afterwards they parted and Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus, his native island. Here the Scripture notices of him cease. The epistle attributed to Barnabas is believed to have been written early in the second century.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
son of the prophet, or of consolation
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
