There is an important translation error in many English versions of the New Testament. Consider, for example, 1 Timothy 4 verses 7 and 8, in the New International Version
Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.
The translation error is for the words “godly” and “godliness”. It’s a serious translation error because it conveys a meaning almost opposite to the one intended in the original Greek.
You can see the Greek with transliteration and translation in the Interlinear version of 1 Timothy 4.
You will see there, that “godliness” (above) is the translation for the Greek word εὐσέβεια (transliterated as eusebeia).
The plain English meaning of “godly” is being (more) like God.1 The plain meaning of “godliness” is the property of being (more) like God.
However, this is not at all what eusebeia means.
As usual, you can follow the links from the word “eusebeia” in the Interlinear version above, to get the standard Strong’s concordance entry for eusebia. This gives the meaning, directly but rather literally, as “well-reverence”.
“Eusebeia” consists of the common Greek stem eu-, meaning good, well done, balanced — suffixed with a version of the word sebomai, meaning to “personally esteem; to hold something (someone) in high respect; showing the reverence or awe (veneration) of someone who is devout.” Hence “well-reverence”.
William Barclay has a 10-page exposition on eusebeia in his book New Testament Words. He states that “The Greeks used eusebia to translate the equally noble Latin word pietas. Pietas was the spirit of devotion to goodness, to honour, to goodness and to duty.” (Pietas has reached us in English as the word piety.) For example, Barclay notes that the Vulgate, a 4th century Latin translation of the Bible, uses “pietas” to translate eusebia. You can see this in the Vulgate version of the quote from Timothy above.
The Septuagint is a 3rd and 2nd century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (and therefore, more or less, the Christian Old Testament). The Septuagint offers some understanding of how the translators understood Greek words at the time. Barclay again: “In Is[iah] 11.2 eusebeia is used for the fear of the Lord, which is one of the gifts of the spirit; and in Prov[erbs] 1.7 it is used for that fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom.”
See detailed notes on eusebeia for more on etymology in classical Greek.
Thus, eusebeia is not “godliness” — being like God — but reverence for God.
Some English translations don’t use godliness for eusebia. The Darby translation of the passage above translates eusebeia as “piety” and Moffatt’s translation uses “religion”. All the French translations I could find on Biblegateway use piété. Spanish translations on Biblehub tend to use piedad, but Nueva Traducción Viviente has “la sumisión a Dios” (submission to God). My wife’s Bible is La Traducción del Nuevo Mundo. Her version is the 1987 edition; it has “devoción piadosa” (pious devotion) with a note in the online edition offering “temor a Jehová” (fear of the Lord). The current study edition of the same translation has “la devoción a Dios” (devotion to God).
So where did “godliness” come from, as a translation of eusebeia into English? The answer seems to be Martin Luther, modified by William Tyndale. Luther translated eusebeia as Gottseligkeit. This is made up of Gott- (God), -selig- (rich in, devoted to) and -keit (-ness), and therefore means the property of being devoted to God. Luther appears to have coined this word himself. However, Tyndale seems to have adopted Luther’s translation, but simplified it in English, in my view disastrously, as “godliness”, and this reading flowed into the King James Version and thence to many other translations.
Why does it matter? Because if you are not careful, you would think that 1 Timothy 4 (and other uses of eusebeia) are encouraging us to be more like God. With that wrong translation in mind, you might describe someone as “godly”, and mean that you perceive their behavior as particularly righteous. But that is not what eusebeia is encouraging us to; it is asking us to seek more reverence towards God. It is encouraging us to humility, and not to pride.
By plain English meaning of “godly” I mean the meaning deriving from the word parts “god-” and “-ly”. The “-ly” suffix means “like in appearance, manner or nature : having the characteristics of” (-ly suffix, Merriam-Webster). Thus “godly” straightforwardly — at a language level — suggests “god-like”. Hence, for example, the Etymonline definition: “resembling God”. However the word “godly” has had much encrustation of later meaning, likely arising from its use in standard English Bible translations. Of course, one could argue that, even if “godly” was a bad translation of eusebeia at the time it was first used, it is a better one now, as godly has evolved in meaning. The only point I am making here is the word “godly” carries with it a strong linguistic temptation to the interpretation “god-like”, and that this is a dangerous trap for those who use it without care. And that that trap can be avoided by more careful translation, avoiding the words “godly” and “godliness” in favor of alternatives that express the Greek meaning in a less ambiguous way.↩︎