Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"A peculiar people" means a strange or odd group of people
"Peculiar" in 1611 meant "one's own special possession," not "strange" or "odd."
Titus 2:14, in every translation this tool compares.
"Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works" (Titus 2:14, KJV). The underlying Greek, periousios, describes a treasured possession set apart from ordinary property, the same idea behind the Latin root of English "peculiar" (peculium, a person's own private savings). The modern sense, odd or eccentric, hadn't become the word's primary meaning yet.
Read with the modern sense, the verse sounds like it's calling Christians strange. Read with the 1611 sense, it's making an ownership claim: a people God has specifically claimed and treasures as his own, the same image behind 1 Peter 2:9's "a peculiar people" (in context, God's own possession, echoing Exodus 19:5's "a peculiar treasure unto me above all people").
