What Does Acts 15:35 Mean?
Paul and Barnabas also continued in Antioch, teaching and bringing good news of the word of the Lord, with many others also.
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
Paul also and Barnabas continued in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also.THE KEY
The word stays present through many voices: Paul and Barnabas teach and announce it alongside many others.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks of a message carried through shared presence: it is taught so it can be understood and announced as good news so it can travel. The work continues through a community, not a single voice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a living message depends on one exceptional speaker; the verse names many others sharing the work.
THE ROOT
διέτριβον
diétribon
GROWS FROM
τριβ-
trib-
To rub or wear; in this compound, to spend time or remain.
The Greek verb is imperfect: they kept spending time there. Its older image of rubbing or wearing gives “continued” a sense of sustained presence, rather than a brief stop.
ALSO GROWS
tribō: Rub, wear away.
τρίβω
This is the basic verb behind the root’s image of duration through repeated contact.
diatribē: Time spent; occupation or discourse.
διατριβή
The related noun carries the sense of time occupied, making the verse’s continued presence concrete.
εὐαγγελιζόμενοι
euangelizomenoi
GROWS FROM
εὐ- (eu-, good) + ἀγγελ- (angel-, message or announcement)
Announce good news.
“bringing good news” in this verse is euangelizomenoi. What KJV calls preaching here is the act of announcing good news. The messenger branch makes the announcement sound like news carried from person to person, fitting the verse’s many voices.
ALSO GROWS
euangelion: Good news; gospel.
εὐαγγέλιον
This related noun names the good news being announced.
angelos: Messenger.
ἄγγελος
This branch links the announcement to a message carried outward.
λόγον
logon
GROWS FROM
λογ- (log-), from λέγω (legō, say or tell)
Speech, saying, message, or account.
English “word” can sound like a single term, while the Greek word can name a whole message or account. Here it is the content many people teach and announce.
ALSO GROWS
legō: Say, tell.
λέγω
The related verb keeps the word family connected to spoken communication.
logion: Saying; oracle.
λόγιον
This related noun shows a saying as one form of the broader message sense.
THE PATTERN
A living message travels through shared teaching and speech, carried by a community across ordinary life and outward to others.
And you shall sharpen them to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.And they held fast in the teaching of the sent ones, and in sharing in common, and in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.For from you the word of the Lord has echoed out, not only in Macedonia and in Achaia, but in every place your full weight leaning toward God has gone out, so that we have no need to speak anything.THE THREAD
And when they had brought the good news to that city and made many learners, they turned back to Lystra, and to Iconium, and to Antioch.The “preaching” here and “preached the gospel” there use forms of εὐαγγελίζομαι (euangelizomai, announce good news). In Acts 14:21, that announcement is joined to teaching many, revealing how proclamation opens into shared learning.
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