Bible word study

Thanatos (Strong’s G2288): Meaning in the Bible

Thanatos (θάνατος) is the Greek word numbered G2288 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as (properly, an adjective used as a noun) death (literally or figuratively). In the King James Bible it is translated X deadly, (be…) death..

• Original wordθάνατος
• Transliterationthánatos
• Pronunciationthan'-at-os
• Strong’s numberG2288
• LanguageGreek

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from G2348;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Thanatos appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Thanatos (G2288) stands behind 120 English renderings in 106 verses across 15 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Romans (23), Revelation (19), Hebrews (10).

How the King James Bible renders Thanatos, by count

• death108 of 120 (90 percent)
• of death4 of 120 (3 percent)
• deadly2 of 120 (2 percent)
• the death2 of 120 (2 percent)
• to death2 of 120 (2 percent)
• deaths1 of 120 (1 percent)

Three places to read Thanatos

• Matthew 4:16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.
• Acts 28:18 Who, when they had examined me, would have let me go, because there was no cause of death in me.
• 2 Corinthians 11:23 Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.

Counts are made at build time from the King James text tagged with Strong’s numbers (eBible.org, public domain). Verses are read from the stored King James text, never typed.

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Thanatos in the original Greek lets you read the passages where it appears more carefully, closer to what the first hearers understood, so the meaning is drawn from the text itself rather than from the English alone.

The lexical data on this page comes from the public-domain Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890), a Hebrew and Greek dictionary keyed to the King James Bible. It is a reference tool, not a settled verdict: no single word decides a doctrine, and meaning is finally shaped by how a word is used in its sentences. Read the passages themselves, prayerfully, and in full.

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