What Does 1 Corinthians 15:4 Mean in the King James?
And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
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 Greek says he “has been raised”, a raising whose result stands, so the grave is real, but it is not the buried one’s final state.
THE MEANING
The burial remains real, and the raising is its answer: the one laid in a grave is the one now alive. This speaks to the reader’s present hope by placing mortal life inside a story where death is not the final state.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that death makes a person irretrievable: the one raised is the one who was buried.
THE ROOT
ἐγήγερται
egēgertai
GROWS FROM
ἐγείρω
egeirō
To awaken, rouse, or raise up.
“rose again” in this verse is egēgertai. Here the verb means “has been raised”: its perfect form presents the raising as completed, with its result still standing. The same word can describe waking or being roused, joining resurrection to awakening without making the burial a metaphor.
ALSO GROWS
egersis: The act or event of rising.
ἔγερσις
This related noun names resurrection with the same raising word-family, revealing the shared root beneath “rose again” and “resurrection.”
egeire: A command to awaken or rise.
ἔγειρε
In Mark 5:41 this form is spoken to a dead girl; the same verb family describes rising from death and waking from sleep.
ἐτάφη
etaphē
GROWS FROM
θάπτω
thaptō
To bury, to lay the dead in a grave.
“was buried” in this verse is etaphē. This is the verse’s physical counterweight to “rose again”: it names burial plainly. Beside egeirō, the sentence says the one raised is the one who entered the grave.
ALSO GROWS
taphos: A burial place.
τάφος
The related word for the grave makes the burial concrete: the verse’s raising answers a body’s actual resting place.
entaphiazō: To prepare a body for burial.
ἐνταφιάζω
This related burial word extends the same word-family to the handling of the body, keeping the verse’s claim grounded in bodily death.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names death plainly while showing life raised through it.
For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.THE THREAD
And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.The same raising verb is used for the Lord and for “us,” carrying the resurrection claim from Jesus into the reader’s own future. The grave remains real; the shared verb makes raising its answer.
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