Witness
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The Greek noun martys originally had a straightforward legal meaning: a witness, one who gives testimony from personal knowledge. In the New Testament it carries that legal weight while also being transformed by the experience of the early church into something richer and more costly.
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Full entry for μάρτυς (G3144) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Greek noun martys originally had a straightforward legal meaning: a witness, one who gives testimony from personal knowledge. In the New Testament it carries that legal weight while also being transformed by the experience of the early church into something richer and more costly.
The BSB source-word alignment has 35 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include witnesses (20), witness (8), a witness (2), [are] witnesses (1), [our] witness (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 18:16. Its strongest book concentrations include Acts (13), Revelation (5), 1 Thessalonians (2), 1 Timothy (2).
The Greek noun martys originally had a straightforward legal meaning: a witness, one who gives testimony from personal knowledge. In the New Testament it carries that legal weight while also being transformed by the experience of the early church into something richer and more costly. The disciples of Jesus are called to be his witnesses (Acts 1:8) — people who testify from direct experience of what they have seen and heard.
But the word begins to shade into its more specific modern meaning (martyr — one who dies for their testimony) as the apostles discover that authentic witness in a hostile world invites lethal opposition. Jesus himself is called 'the faithful witness' in Revelation 1:5, and the book goes on to describe those who have been killed 'for the word of God and for the testimony they held' (Rev.
6:9). The word thus moves through the New Testament in a way that the church has always felt: to be a witness to Jesus Christ is not a passive exercise but a costly one, because what is being testified touches every power structure and every idol. Hebrews 12:1 speaks of a 'great cloud of witnesses' — the faithful of all the ages — surrounding and encouraging the present generation.
That image makes the whole canonical community a testimony to the faithfulness of God.
Martys appears in the local Greek index about 35 times in the New Testament, with its highest concentration in Acts (the commissioning and activity of apostolic witness), Luke-Acts (witnesses to the resurrection), Hebrews (the cloud of witnesses from Israel's history), and Revelation (where witness and martyrdom are most intimately linked). The word family also includes martyreō (to testify) and martyria (testimony), making the witness-concept one of the most fully developed word-families in the NT.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
The commission of Acts 1:8 is the hinge on which the entire book turns. 'Witnesses' here is not a vague encouragement to mention Jesus occasionally — it is a formal appointment to give testimony grounded in direct experience of the risen Lord. The geographic expansion (Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the world) structures the whole book. And the witness role is enabled by the Spirit, not just undertaken by human resolve.
And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and has released us from our sins by His blood,
Revelation's opening christological title is theologically dense: Christ is martys — the one whose testimony is both perfect and faithful, and whose faithfulness to that testimony led through death to resurrection. This places the entire Revelation under the authority of the witness who has already passed through tribulation and vindication. Disciples who are called to witness in Revelation's context (under Domitian) are following a Lord who modeled what faithful witnessing costs.
God has raised this Jesus to life, to which we are all witnesses.
Peter's Pentecost sermon is built on the eyewitness claim. The apostolic witness to the resurrection is not a hypothesis or an interpretation — it is a claim to have seen. The legal dimension of martys is fully present: these are people who will stand behind their testimony in the most public of contexts. The resurrection is the content of what the church witnesses, and the apostles are its accredited first witnesses.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us.
The 'cloud of witnesses' is the whole of Hebrews 11's gallery of the faithful. They are witnesses not merely to what they saw but to what they believed and endured without yet receiving the promise. Their testimony — preserved in scripture — constitutes an ongoing encouragement and accountability to the present generation. The athletic metaphor (race) and the witness metaphor work together: the stadium is full of those who have already run their course.
You are witnesses of these things.
The simplest statement of the disciples' vocation, spoken by the risen Jesus at the end of Luke's Gospel. The resurrection appearances are not private experiences to be kept inward — they are the content of a testimony that the disciples are appointed to carry into the world. This terse commission is the direct predecessor to the fuller form in Acts 1:8.
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.
Greek word. One who testifies to facts personally observed, especially Christ's resurrection or God's character in covenant.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 34 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a witness
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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 7 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.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 3 selected witnesses from 35 lexical occurrence verses.
μάρτυς is of uncertain origin - no further derivation.
The church’s identity is tied to bearing truthful testimony about the risen Christ, even when that testimony leads to suffering. 1 Timothy 5:17-25
Defines Paul’s apostolic calling flowing from encounter. Acts 1:1-11
Accountability must be grounded in verified testimony, preventing slander. Acts 22:6-16
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The word martys teaches the church what witnessing actually is: it is not a sales technique or an argument but the report of someone who has seen. When the apostles say 'we are witnesses,' they are not making a philosophical claim — they are standing on eyewitness testimony to a historical event (the resurrection) and staking their credibility, their freedom, and eventually their lives on it.
That original meaning is the foundation for every Christian's witness today. The preacher who works from martys will resist two common distortions: the reduction of witness to lifestyle only (unmoored from verbal testimony) and the reduction of witness to verbal persuasion only (unmoored from a life that costs something). The NT holds them together in the same word — and Revelation presses toward the extreme case, where faithful witness requires willingness to die rather than retract the testimony.
Hebrews 12:1 provides the pastoral horizon: the disciples of Jesus do not witness in isolation but are embedded in a company of all who have trusted God through history. Their courage is a gift from the witnesses who ran before them, and their perseverance will become a gift to those who come after.
Acts.1.8
The Greek martys comes from a root related to 'mindfulness' or 'memory' — a witness is someone who brings to mind what they have directly experienced. The English word 'martyr' is simply a transliteration of martys, reflecting the process by which the NT word acquired its modern sense through the actual deaths of Christian witnesses in the early centuries. The word family (martys, martyreō, martyria, martyrion, diamartyromai) is one of the most theologically productive in the NT, generating a whole theology of testimony.
The Old Testament background of witness is legal and covenantal: the Mosaic law required two or three witnesses to establish a charge (Deut. 17:6; 19:15), and the prophets invoked creation itself as a witness against Israel's covenant-breaking (Isa. 1:2; Mic. 1:2). The NT inherits this legal weight when the apostles claim to be witnesses to the resurrection — they are offering legally-structured testimony to a covenant-fulfilling event.
John's Gospel develops a sophisticated theology of testimony in which the Father, the Son, the Spirit, the works of Jesus, and the scriptures all serve as witnesses to who Jesus is (John 5:31-39; 8:13-18). Revelation takes the word to its limit: Christ is the faithful witness who died for his testimony, and his followers are called to the same willingness — a trajectory that makes martyrdom not a defeat but the ultimate form of faithful witness.
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