THE BIBLICAL CONCEPT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS BY OKONKWO CHUKWUKA TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION II. RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE HEBREW BIBLE III. HEBREW DEFINITION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IV. RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT V. RIGHTEOUS AS SAINT VI. CONCLUSION REFERENCE LIST INTRODUCTION Righteousness (also called rectude) is an important theological concept in Zoroastrianism , Hinduism (dharma), Judaism, Chrisanity and Islam (Kummel1961:120). It is an aribute that implies that a person's acons are jusfied, and can have the connotaon that the person has been "judged" or "reckoned" as leading a life that is pleasing to God. William Tyndale remodeled the word aſter an earlier word rihtwis, which would have yielded modern English *rightwise or *rightways. He used it to translate the Hebrew root , tzedek, which appears more than five hundred mes in the Hebrew Bible , and the Greek word δικαιος (dikaios), which appears more than two hundred mes in the New Testament (Fuller 1993:304). In the same vein, the researcher seeks to find the etymology of the word by tracing its root from the Hebrew origin than to the Greek source; this would be a beer way to understanding properly what righteousness is all about. RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE HEBREW BIBLE Righteousness is one of the chief aributes of God as portrayed in the Hebrew Bible. Its chief meaning concerns ethical conduct.(Kummel 1961:78). (For example, Levicus 19:36; Deuteronomy 25:1; Psalm 1:6; Proverbs 8:20). It is used in a legal sense; while the guilty are