Βηθσαΐδά
Bethsaida
Thayer's lists 3 entries for ‘Bethsaida’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Thayer's Greek Lexicon
From Thayer's Greek Lexicon
Where this word appears
Every verse where G966 appears in the Book of John — 2 distinct verses. 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 1:45 Βηθσαϊδά n proper indecl Philip found Nathanael, and said to him, "We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
- John 12:21 Βηθσαϊδὰ n proper indecl These, therefore, came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, "Sir, we want to see Jesus."
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, Βηθσαιδα (Bēthsaïdá) means “Bethsaida.” It first appears in Matthew 11:21. Spanning 7 verses in 4 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Greek New Testament. Its uses concentrate in Mark (29% of all occurrences). 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 G966 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 4 / 27
- NT books
- The word appears in 4 of 27 New Testament books.
- #1,358
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Greek words (rank 1,358 of 5,347 Greek words by occurrence).
View all 7 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 7 distinct verses.
- Gospels 7 verses · 100%
- Lukan (Luke–Acts) 2 verses · 29%
- Johannine 2 verses · 29%
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: Bethsaida 7×
- American Standard Version: Bethsaida 7×
- Berean Standard Bible: Bethsaida 7×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Bethsaida 7×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders G966 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders G966 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders G966 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders G966 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in Thayer's
The 3 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.
- Bethsaida = "house of fish"
- a small fishing village on the west shore of Lake Gennesaret, home of Andrew, Peter, Philip and John
- a village in lower Gaulanitis on the eastern shore of Lake Gennesaret, not far from where the Jordan empties into it
Word origin
Derived from βορβορος (bórboros) (G1004) — dung.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms G966 takes in the Greek New Testament, most frequent first — each parse links to that case’s occurrences in the concordance.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Βηθσαϊδά Bēthsaïdá | Noun, Proper, indeclinable | Luke 9:10 | 3 |
| Βηθσαϊδάν Bēthsaïdán | Noun, Proper, indeclinable | Matthew 11:21 | 3 |
| Βηθσαϊδὰ Bēthsaïdà | Noun, Proper, indeclinable | John 12:21 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other Thayer's entries built from the same root as G966, 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
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 → 2 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 (Bethsaida). 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
House of fish. (1.) A town in Galilee, on the west side of the sea of Tiberias, in the "land of Gennesaret." It was the native place of Peter, Andrew, and Philip, and was frequently resorted to by Jesus (Mark 6:45; John 1:44; 12:21). It is supposed to have been at the modern Ain Tabighah, a bay to the north of Gennesaret.
(2.) A city near which Christ fed 5,000 (Luke 9:10; comp. John 6:17; Matt. 14:15-21), and where the blind man had his sight restored (Mark 8:22), on the east side of the lake, two miles up the Jordan. It stood within the region of Gaulonitis, and was enlarged by Philip the tetrarch, who called it "Julias," after the emperor's daughter. Or, as some have supposed, there may have been but one Bethsaida built on both sides of the lake, near where the Jordan enters it. Now the ruins et-Tel.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(house of fish) of Galilee, (John 12:21) a city which was the native place of Andrew, Peter and Philip, (John 1:44; 12:21) in the land of Gennesareth, (Mark 6:46) comp. Mark 6:53 And therefore on the west side of the lake. By comparing the narratives in (Mark 6:31-53) and Luke 9:10-17 It appears certain that the Bethsaida at which the five thousand were fed must have been a second place of the same name on the east of the lake. (But in reality "there is but one Bethsaida, that known on our maps at Bethsaida Julias." L. Abbot in Biblical and Oriental Journal . The fact is that Bethsaida was a village on both sides of the Jordan as it enters the sea of Galilee on the north, so that the western part of the village was in Galilee and the eastern portion in Gaulonitis, part of the tetrarchy of Philip. This eastern portion was built up into a beautiful city by Herod Philip, and named by him Bethsaida Julias, after Julia the daughter of the Roman emperor Tiberius Caesar. On the plain of Butaiha, a mile or two to the east, the five thousand were fed. The western part of the town remained a small village.--ED.)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
house of fruits, or of food, or of snares
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
