Five-minute study · Day 40 · Revelation 1
Revelation 1:5
A word worth stopping on: witness μάρτυς martys
John calls Jesus 'the faithful martys.' Your Bible translates that as 'witness.' By 95 AD, when John wrote this on the island of Patmos, the word was already changing. So many witnesses had been killed for their testimony that the Greek word for 'witness' was becoming the Greek word for someone who dies for what they saw. The English word 'martyr' comes directly from this Greek term. John uses it for Jesus at the very moment the word is splitting in two, and both meanings are true at once.
Word study: witness
- Greek
- μάρτυς
- Pronounced
- martys
- Strong's
- G3144
- Definition
- A witness, one who testifies to what they have seen or known. By the late first century, increasingly used for one who testifies at the cost of their life.
In a Greek courtroom, the martys was the person who took the stand. They testified to what they had seen with their own eyes. The word carried legal weight: a martys placed themselves under oath and accepted the consequences of their testimony. Perjury was punishable. Testimony was binding.
The shift began with the apostles. Stephen was stoned while testifying about Jesus (Acts 7). James was executed by Herod (Acts 12:2). Peter and Paul were killed in Rome. One by one, the witnesses became the dead. The pattern was so consistent that the word itself absorbed the cost. By the time John wrote Revelation, martys had begun its migration from 'witness' to 'martyr,' a journey that would be complete within a century.
John applies this transitional word to Jesus. He is the faithful martys: the one who testified to the truth about God (witness) and died for that testimony (martyr). The word holds both meanings simultaneously. Jesus is the witness who took the stand, and the stand was a cross. Thayer notes that this double meaning was active in late first-century Greek. John did not have to choose between the two senses. His readers heard both.
Historical context · 30 to 150 AD
When Words Change Because People Die
David Aune, in his Revelation commentary for the Word Biblical Commentary series, traces the semantic development of martys across the first and second centuries. In Acts, the word still primarily means 'witness.' By the time of the Martyrdom of Polycarp (c. 155 AD), it has fully shifted: Polycarp is called a martys because he was burned alive, and the text assumes readers understand the word means someone who died for their faith.
The transition happened because of Domitian. The emperor who likely exiled John to Patmos (Revelation 1:9) demanded to be addressed as 'Lord and God' (dominus et deus, according to Suetonius, Domitian 13). Christians who refused the title faced consequences. The Roman province of Asia, where all seven churches of Revelation were located, was a center of imperial cult worship. Temples to the emperor stood in Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamum.
Revelation 2:13 names a specific martys: Antipas, killed in Pergamum 'where Satan's throne is.' The archaeological remains of the Great Altar of Zeus at Pergamum, excavated by Carl Humann in the 1870s and now reconstructed in Berlin, match John's description. In that city, in that culture, the cost of testimony was measured in blood. The word absorbed the price that the speakers kept paying.
For reflection
Martys means the testimony cost something. Think about a time you stayed silent about your faith because speaking would have been uncomfortable. Now think about Antipas, killed in Pergamum for saying what he believed. You are not likely facing death for your testimony. So what exactly is the cost you are avoiding?
The word changed because the witnesses did not stop talking. The silence is what the word resists.
Sources: Thayer's Lexicon; Aune, 'Revelation' (WBC); Suetonius, 'Life of Domitian'