What Does 1 Corinthians 15:39 Mean in the King James?
All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The same word “flesh” gathers humans, beasts, fish, and birds into one embodied world, while “another” keeps their forms distinct.
THE MEANING
Your embodied life belongs to the wider world of living flesh, yet it has a distinct form. Humans, beasts, fish, and birds share the word “flesh,” while each is called another. Shared embodiment does not make every body interchangeable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that sharing the word “flesh” means every body is alike.
THE ROOT
σάρξ
sárx
GROWS FROM
σαρκ-
Flesh; bodily substance or embodied creatureliness.
The Greek repeats the same root for human, beast, fish, and bird flesh. The shared word gathers them into one field of embodiment, while the repeated “another” preserves their distinct forms.
ALSO GROWS
sarkinos: Made of flesh; fleshy.
σάρκινος
This branch makes the bodily substance explicit, illuminating the verse’s shared language for different creatures.
sarkikos: Fleshly; pertaining to flesh.
σαρκικός
This branch carries the same root into descriptions of what belongs to embodied, fleshly life.
ἄλλη
allē
GROWS FROM
ἀλλ-
Other; another, distinct from what has already been named.
The verse repeats this word as it moves from humans to beasts, fish, and birds. Difference is marked within the shared language of flesh: each is another form of embodied life.
ALSO GROWS
allotrios: Belonging to another; foreign.
ἀλλότριος
It carries the sense of what is other or belongs elsewhere, echoing the verse’s repeated distinctions.
allogenēs: Of another people or nation; foreign-born.
ἀλλογενής
This compound preserves the root’s sense of being other in origin, like the verse’s distinct creaturely forms.
THE PATTERN
Living creation shares embodied existence while taking distinct forms.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind:THE THREAD
Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.The Greek root σαρκ- (sark-, “flesh”) returns here, paired with “blood,” to name mortal embodiment in contrast with inheriting incorruption. The following verses continue the question of how a body changes, opening the distinctions in verse 39 into a question of present and raised embodiment.
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