Skip to main content
Bible Q

What is the New Testament verse that is a pangram, a sentence which uses every Greek letter of the alphabet?

A pangram is a sentence which uses every letter of a language – a famous example in English is “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

The only New Testament verse that is a pangram, a sentence which uses every Greek letter of the alphabet, is Matthew 5:30?  There is also another verse which does the same in two sentences; Revelation 2:10 but that does not constitute a true pangram, since the entire Greek alphabet is contained in two sentences rather than just one. And of course the verse divisions in the New Testament date from 1551, when the Parisian printer Robert Stephanus published his Greek and Latin edition of the New Testament in which each chapter was divided into separate verses for the first time.

The uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are: Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω

The Greek text of Matthew 5:30 is as follows.

30 καὶ εἰ ἡ δεξιά σου χεὶρ σκανδαλίζει σε, ἔκκοψον αὐτὴν καὶ βάλε ἀπὸ σοῦ· συμφέρει γάρ σοι ἵνα ἀπόληται ἓν τῶν μελῶν σου καὶ μὴ ὅλον τὸ σῶμά σου εἰς γέενναν ἀπέλθῃ.

kaí ei e dexiá sou kheír skandalízei se, ékkopson auten kaí bále apó soú: symférei gár soi ína apóletai én tón melón sou kaí me ólon tó sómá sou eis géennan apélthi.

And if the right of you hand stumbles you, cut it off, and throw it away from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish, than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna.

There is no significance to the fact that Matthew 5:30 is a pangram. Given the length of the New Testament and that Greek does not have any letters like q and x in English which are very rare, it is not statistically significant to find 1 sentence that is a pangram. Or even to find a second verse which is almost a pangram but in two sentences. The Old Testament does not contain any Hebrew pangrams. Nor any verses which contain sentences to make up a false pangram like Revelation 2:10.

 

 

 

 

No Comments yet!