The familiar Greek noun πολις (polis) means city and survives in English words such as politics, policy, police, but most importantly: polite, which is a word like civilized, which shares its root with the noun city. A city is not about its buildings but about the unusual density of people who have found a way to live together without acting on their natural urges to be aggressive and territorial. That means that a city, in essence, describes a code of conduct that governs city life and makes city life possible. That means that a πολις (polis) is defined as a society held together by a common law.

Greek philosophers who contemplated these things, and particularly the democratic ideal, came up with the idea of ελευθερια (eleutheria), or freedom-by-law: the idea that one attains freedom via rules — the freedom to say anything when mastering the laws of language, the freedom to play anything when mastering the rules of music, the freedom to go anywhere when mastering the laws of traffic. Paul even summed up the purpose of the gospel by means of this word: "It was for ελευθερια (eleutheria), freedom-by-law, that Christ has set us free" (Galatians 5:1), which in turn explains why the New Jerusalem is indeed a πολις (polis), not after its buildings but the freedom of its people (Hebrews 11:10, Revelation 3:12, 22:14).

In the classics, the noun πολις (polis) described a large urban center, usually walled, and usually with well-defined lands and even satellite villages (Matthew 2:23, Acts 19:29, Revelation 16:19). A wall-less village or hamlet was called κωμη (kome), and an intermediately sized settlement, but without a wall, was known as a κωμοπολις (komopolis).

Our noun πολις (polis), meaning city, is not technically related but obviously reminds of the familiar adjective πολυς (polus), meaning many, and where in English the word city brings to mind a series of buildings intersected by streets, in Greek it brings to mind an interlinked collective of people. This is additionally shown by the use of this noun πολις (polis) in statements like: "The whole city came out to meet Jesus" (Matthew 8:34), and "the whole city was stirred ..." (Matthew 21:10, also see Mark 1:33, Acts 13:44 and 21:30), which are not figurative statements but statements that make use of the literal core definition of our word πολις (polis).

Also not without significance is the observation that a city is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, or even a park, but a technological complex, centered upon its commercial market and comprising elements that were manufactured by technicians: people like Bezalel and Oholiab, to whom God gave the spirit of technology so as to construct the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 31:1-11). Likewise, the earthly profession of both Jesus and Joseph was that of τεκτων (tekton), or assembler, from the same Proto-Indo-European root that gave English words like technology, textile and text. This is turn suggests that a city is essentially text based, since any complex city must be administrated and legislated and that's impossible without text.

This in turn suggests that the "city" called New Jerusalem, which John saw descending from the heavens (Revelation 21:2), ties into the "cloud" of witnesses surrounding us (Hebrews 12:1), which in turn rather describes a technological environment in which people freely communicate and exchange their testimonies. Perhaps this describes the Internet, which is essentially the postal system imaged to perfect efficiency (see our article on οδος, hodos, road), but perhaps something even greater than that and yet to be revealed to the wider world (because the familiar Internet might actually be the armies of Gog and Magog that converge in hate upon the Beloved City across the broad plain of the earth: Revelation 20:9, also see Romans 8:19).

Also worthy of note is that Daniel's word for Watcher — "I was looking in the visions in my mind as I lay on my bed, and behold, an angelic Watcher, a holy one, descended from heaven" (Daniel 4:13, 4:17 and 4:23) — uses the Aramaic noun עיר ('ir), which identical to the Hebrew word for city: עיר ('ir).

Our noun πολις (polis) is used 163 times in the New Testament; see full concordance. Other derivations and compounds that contain the noun πολις (polis) and which are used in the Bible are: