Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
nous
Mind. Understanding and the faculty that does it, in one noun.
Romans 12:2, in every translation this tool compares.
Use your head. He has a good head on him. English does this with a body part; Greek does it with an abstract noun.
Because it is the word added to the Shema quotation in the Gospels and the word Paul uses when he asks for transformation, which puts thinking at the centre of both.
Every version reads mind or understanding.
νοῦς nous · G3563
Nous is the reasoning faculty and also the outlook it produces. It is the root of metanoia, and dianoia at Mark 12:30 is from the same family.
English mind covers the faculty but not the settled outlook, so renewal of the nous sounds like a mental exercise rather than a reorientation.
Words sharing a root across a writer's vocabulary usually belong in the same study. Follow the root rather than the single word.
Mind is the majority rendering throughout.
- Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 2:16; Ephesians 4:23
- dianoia at Mark 12:30
- metanoia from the same root
