Ancient Greek

Adjective

θεῖον • ‎(theîon) n

1. Neuter nominative singular form of θεῖος ‎(theîos, “divine”).
   • New Testament, Acts of the Apostles 17.29

     γένος οὖν ὑπάρχοντες τοῦ θεοῦ οὐκ ὀφείλομεν νομίζειν χρυσῷ ἢ ἀργύρῳ ἢ λιθῳ, χαράγματι τέχνης και ἐνθυμήσεως ἀνθρώπου, τὸ θεῖον εἶναι ὅμοιον.

     Literally: offspring therefore being of the god, we should not think to gold or silver or stone formed things of skill and of idea of man, the divine being similar.
     Idimatically: Therefore, since we are God's offspring, we should not consider things of gold or silver or stone, being made by human skill and ingenuity, to be similar to the divine.

2. (as substantive)
   1. Divinity
   2. (plural) the acts of the gods

Inflection

References

• (A) θεῖος (A) in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press

Etymology 2

From earlier θέειον ‎(théeion), *θέϝειον. Usually connected to Proto-Indo-European *dʰewh₂- ‎(“smoke, haze”), implying an original meaning of "fumigant", the same root as θυμιάω ‎(thumiáō, “to burn, smoke”).

Alternative forms

• θέειον ‎(théeion), θήϊον ‎(thḗïon) Epic

Noun

θεῖον • ‎(theîon) n ‎(genitive θείου); second declension

1. Sulfur.
   • 50 CE – 100 CE, The Gospel of Luke 17.29

     ᾗ δὲ ἡμέρᾳ ἐξῆλθεν Λὼτ̓ ἀπὸ Σοδόμων, ἔβρεξεν πῦρ καὶ θεῖον ἀπ' οὐρανοῦ καὶ ἀπώλεσεν πάντας.

     Literally: and to the day departed Lot from Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from the sky and destroyed all.
     Idiomatic: And on the day that Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from the heavens and destroyed everyone.

Inflection

References

• θεῖον (A) in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• θεῖον in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• «θεῖον» in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• Bauer, Walter et al. (2001) A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Third edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• “G2303”, in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible, 1979
• Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English-Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
  • brimstone idem, page 99.
  • sulphur idem, page 837.