Αὐτὸς

αὐτὸς (autos, αὐτός, -ή, -ό)

gloss: 3rd person pronoun, adjective, intensifier in its various forms. In masculine: he, his, himself etc.

Strong's 846

GK 899

Frequency 5597


 * The third most common word in the Greek New Testament with a range of meanings and uses.
 * Has a wide variety of forms for the various genders and cases. Fortunately all very regular as seen in the tables below.

Paradigms
Masculine

Feminine Note carefully the accent mark on αὐτή. It will be useful to distinguish it from the demonstrative nominative feminine αὕτη which has a rough breathing and an accent over the first syllable.

Neuter Like in many situations, the neuter follows the masculine but loses the ν at the end of the nominative and accusative.

As an intensifier
αὐτὸς can function as an intensifier, to emphasis the subject of an action. Also called a reflexive intensifier. For example:
 * καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ θεὸς - and God himself

Characteristics:
 * will always be in the nominative
 * will always be in the predicate position, e.g. before the subject and not preceded by an article
 * person - no person is determined by the verb
 * number - agrees with the verb
 * gender - agrees with the subject or the implied subject

As a regular 3rd person pronoun
Since the person is usually inherent in the verb, αὐτὸς in the nominative would seem redundant (just like in many European languages like Spanish). Thus its presence in the nominative usually signals intensifification. But it does occur as a plain old nominative pronoun:
 * αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ - for he will save his people (Matthew 1:21)
 * ὅτι αὐτοὶ τὸν θεὸν ὄψονται - for they will see God (Matthew 5:8)

Where it occurs in any other case, and is not in the attributive position, it is functioning as a regular 3rd person pronoun: his, to him, him etc. Plenty of such examples here.