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The Greek noun martyria means testimony — the formal report of what a witness (martys) has seen or knows. In everyday Greek it carried the legal sense of evidence given in a court proceeding, and the New Testament carries that legal precision into the highest possible register: the testimony of God himself, the testimony about Jesus Christ, and the testimony given by those who have received the Spirit.
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Full entry for μαρτυρία (G3141) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Greek noun martyria means testimony — the formal report of what a witness (martys) has seen or knows. In everyday Greek it carried the legal sense of evidence given in a court proceeding, and the New Testament carries that legal precision into the highest possible register: the testimony of God himself, the testimony about Jesus Christ, and the.
The BSB source-word alignment has 37 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include testimony (35), a witness (1), reputation (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Mark 14:55. Its strongest book concentrations include John (14), Revelation (9), 1 John (6), Mark (3).
This entry includes 2 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
The Greek noun martyria means testimony — the formal report of what a witness (martys) has seen or knows. In everyday Greek it carried the legal sense of evidence given in a court proceeding, and the New Testament carries that legal precision into the highest possible register: the testimony of God himself, the testimony about Jesus Christ, and the testimony given by those who have received the Spirit.
What makes martyria theologically powerful in the NT is that it is always grounded in something actual — a historical event (the resurrection), a divine declaration, a direct encounter. John's Gospel develops the most elaborate theology of testimony in the NT: the Father testifies about the Son (John 5:37), the works of Jesus testify (John 5:36), the scriptures testify (John 5:39), and the Spirit testifies alongside the disciples (John 15:26-27).
Every line of testimony in John converges on a single question: who is Jesus? Revelation brings martyria to its most intense expression, where the testimony of Jesus becomes the defining content of prophecy (Rev. 19:10) and where those who refuse to retract their testimony are the overcomers (Rev. 12:11). The preacher who enters martyria discovers that Christian proclamation is always testimony — not argument from first principles but report of what God has done and who Christ has shown himself to be.
The local Greek index currently counts about 37 NT occurrences for martyria, with the largest concentration in John's Gospel and the Johannine letters, and significant occurrences in Revelation. It is almost entirely absent from the Synoptics outside of the legal/trial contexts. Paul uses the related verb and noun for the apostolic witness to the resurrection. Revelation uses it to describe the content that identifies the church as the church and that marks the faithful in the age of persecution.
Truly, truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, and yet you people do not accept our testimony.
Jesus sets out the epistemological ground of his testimony: he speaks from knowledge and direct experience, not speculation. The complaint 'you don't receive our witness' is not merely a social observation but a theological diagnosis — the failure to receive the testimony about Jesus is a failure of the deepest kind. This verse establishes martyria as a word with truth-claims built into it.
Even if we accept human testimony, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony that God has given about His Son.
The a-fortiori argument: human testimony is received in courts and in ordinary life; divine testimony is infinitely more reliable. The word martyria appears twice in this verse, distinguishing human and divine testimony. The 'testimony of God' about his Son is the highest form of the word in the NT — and 1 John argues that it is precisely this testimony that gives believers their assurance of eternal life (1 John 5:11).
They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they did not love their lives so as to shy away from death.
Revelation 12:11 is the canonical summit of martyria as costly witness. The two instruments of overcoming are blood (what Christ gave) and testimony (what the church gives). The refusal to retract one's testimony even at the cost of life is presented not as tragedy but as the means of victory — because the testimony is the truth about the Lamb who has already overcome.
Who testifies to everything he saw. This is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.
John introduces himself as someone who 'testified' — his writing of the Revelation is itself an act of martyria. The pairing of 'God's word' and 'the testimony of Jesus Christ' appears repeatedly in Revelation as a description of the defining content of faithful Christian existence. To possess this testimony is to belong to the company of the faithful; to be willing to hold it under pressure is the mark of the overcomer.
With great power the apostles continued to give their testimony about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And abundant grace was upon them all.
Acts uses martyria and its verb (martyreō) to describe the apostolic proclamation of the resurrection as the central content of their testimony. The link between 'great power' and 'great grace' suggests that martyria — when it is testimony to the risen Christ — is accompanied by divine enabling that makes it more than mere communication.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. Testimony or evidence given formally, especially witness to Christ and divine truth in NT contexts.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 37 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
witness, evidence, testimony
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 4 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 6 selected witnesses from 37 lexical occurrence verses.
μαρτυρία is built from this root:
Central Johannine theme grounding faith in eyewitness proclamation. 1 John 5:6-12
Assurance of Gospel reliability. John 5:30–47
Legal validation of divine identity.
Frames the legal witness supporting Jesus’ claims.
Centers assurance on God’s declared truth regarding Jesus rather than subjective experience.
Assurance rests on God’s declared witness, not subjective speculation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Martyria reminds the preacher that Christian proclamation is not the same as Christian argument. The apostles did not primarily attempt to convince the world through logical demonstration — they testified. They said: we were there, we saw him alive, we heard him, we touched him, this is what we report. That forensic, testimonial character of early Christian proclamation is important to recover, especially in a culture that wants to adjudicate truth by argument alone.
The preacher's role includes the testimonial dimension: bearing witness to what God has done — in scripture, in history, in the community of faith, in one's own encounter with Christ. First John 5:9-11 provides the deepest grounding: God himself has testified about his Son, and that divine testimony is more than sufficient; the only question is whether we receive it.
Revelation 12:11 provides the eschatological horizon: the word of testimony, held faithfully, is one of the two instruments by which the powers of this age are overcome. The testimony about the Lamb is not a private religious sentiment — it is a world-altering declaration that carries consequences.
Rev.12.11
Martyria is the noun formed from the verb martyreō (to testify/witness). Together with martys (witness/person) and martyrion (testimony/proof), they constitute a word family that generates the English word 'martyr' through the historical experience of the church: to testify about Jesus in a hostile world was to risk death, so the word for 'witness' came to mean 'one who dies for their faith.'
The NT itself preserves both the original legal meaning (testimony in a proceeding) and the emerging martyrological sense (witness that costs everything) in tension throughout Revelation.
The OT legal requirement that testimony be established by two or three witnesses (Deut. 17:6; 19:15) shapes the NT's careful attention to multiple lines of testimony. John's Gospel is structured partly as a legal brief in which multiple witnesses testify about Jesus (Father, works, scriptures, John the Baptist) so that Israel's own legal standard is met. The new covenant community, as those who have received the Spirit who 'testifies about' Christ (John 15:26), are incorporated into an ongoing act of divine martyria that began before creation, was enacted in the resurrection, and will continue until the testimony is no longer needed because every knee has bowed.
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