What Does 1 Corinthians 15:21 Mean?
For since death came through a human, through a human also came the rising of the dead.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.THE KEY
Humanity is the passage through which both death comes and the dead rise.
THE MEANING
Death and the rising of the dead belong to the same human story: death comes through a human, and resurrection comes through a human. The reader is not outside that story; the verse holds human life within both mortality and the possibility of rising.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that human nature can only carry death: the same human story also carries the rising of the dead.
THE ROOT
ἀνάστασις
anastasis
GROWS FROM
ἵστημι
histēmi
To stand or set in place; with ἀνά (ana, up), it forms the idea of standing up or rising.
The Greek word carries the movement of standing up within what English names as resurrection. The dead are not only described as receiving life; they are pictured as rising.
ALSO GROWS
anistēmi: To rise or stand up.
ἀνίστημι
This verb shares the word’s root and makes the rising movement in “resurrection of the dead” visible.
stasis: A standing or position.
στάσις
This related form preserves the image of standing that underlies the word for resurrection.
THE PATTERN
The dead are not left in death; scripture names them as rising into life.
Your dead will live; together with my corpse they will rise. Awake and ring out, you who camp in the dust, for your dew is a dew of lights, and the earth will drop the slackened ones.Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.For as in Adam all die, so also in the Anointed One all will be made alive.THE THREAD
Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.John uses the same Greek word, ἀνάστασις (anastasis), for “resurrection.” Here the rising of the dead is named as life in a person, opening the verse’s claim that resurrection comes through a human.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us