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.
soma
Body. The word Paul chooses for the church, and deliberately not the other one.
1 Corinthians 12:27, in every translation this tool compares.
The body of the report. A body of water. English uses the word for an organised whole without anyone thinking of anatomy.
Because Paul had flesh available and picked body, and the distinction between the two is most of what he is arguing in Romans and Galatians.
Every version reads body. No dispute.
σῶμα soma · G4983
Soma is the physical body and also an organised whole. Paul uses it positively throughout, including of the church and of the resurrection body, where sarx carries the negative weight.
English uses the word the same double way, so nothing is lost there. What is lost is the contrast with the other Greek word, which English flattens.
When two near-synonyms are used with opposite valence by the same writer, the pair is the argument. Read them together rather than separately.
Every English version reads body.
- soma of the church: Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 12:12-27
- soma of the resurrection body: 1 Corinthians 15:44
- Contrast with sarx at Romans 8
