I’m continuing the word study of John 3:16 from yesterday considering each word in the verse using a scholarly concordance that alerts me to meanings and instances of the word in ancient Greek literature including the Septuagint.
hina [that]: that/in order that/so that/see that/to what end/why/for what good. I mentioned the enthymeme rhetorical structure when discussing houtos, and it’s showing up again with hina. This word acts as a hinge for two statements, a predicate and a conclusion. The predicate in this case is what comes immediately before hina: ton huion ton monogene edoken [=the son the one-of-a-kind he offered]. The rest of the verse, as it turns out, concludes the enthymeme, since another hinge word like hina and houtosdoesn’t appear in the final clause: pas ho pisteuon eis auton me apoletai alla eche zoen aionion (we’ll get to each of these words). And because the statement in which hina appears does not present the interrogative (i.e., the form of a question), this rules out meanings like “to what end,” “why,” and “for what good.” It makes sense to retain “that” to align with the single word hina and not add English words in constructions like “in order that” and “so that.”
pas [everyone]: every/all/the whole/the universe/all flesh/everyone/any/continually/every kind/all things/them. By itself, pasappears in Greek literature usually as a determiner like “all” in English. But combined with ho [=who] as it does here in verse 16, pas ho tends toward the pronoun function, in which case “everyone who” aligns better than “all who.” But “all who” treats “all” as a pronoun anyway, so either translation probably approximates pas ho just fine.
ho [who]: Unlike the previous instance of ho in the verse, this instance doesn’t immediately follow with theos, so ho here doesn’t carry a titular function; it’s simply “who.”
pisteuon [believes]: to trust/to put faith in/to believe in/to believe/to admit the reality of/to commit (something to somebody). As with kosmon, the infinitive pisteuo carries a great deal of complexity and nuance. The etymology of the word connects with the Greek pantheon in the deity Pistis, the personification of reliability and fidelity. The Roman equivalent of Pistis was Fides, which also influenced Latin vocabulary in words like fidelity, confide, confident, fidget. Notice the sense of reliability in those Latin-based English words: a confident person can be said to be con [=with] + Fides [=trust], not one to be shaken or uncertain. In ancient Greek culture, one might pray to Pistis when wishing for good trust in something; like hoping the sails on the boat remain steadfast during a voyage. Pistis was considered the giver of trustworthiness, steadfastness. Of course the name transforms into a common verb, pisteuo, over time. But the etymology helps us approximate a closer translation to pisteuon than “believes.” The word in Greek connotes more than belief — there is a trust element, a fidelity element, a remaining-true-to-someone element present in pisteuo we don’t want to miss if possible. We have to contend with a little bit of wrench, however. As it turns out, Christians by the third century had begun to carve out a theological concept of faith using the word pisteuo, and in the works of Augustine and other patristics, we see a long fixation on a new category of trust/fidelity attached to the sacraments and personal salvation. The Greek pisteuo has been so constantly translated into English as “faith” that this Christian concept gets layered onto New Testament instances of pisteuo. Has this linguistic evolution occurred by the time the Gospel of John — specifically Papyrus 66 or Uncial 01 — was composed? This could mean pisteuon hews closer to “believe” or “has faith in” than the trust/fidelity notion embedded in the earlier Greek. As we gauge the rhetorical settings surrounding instances of pisteuo in the Gospel of John, we see a regular association with Jesus performing miracles and crediting the pisteuo of the healed; we see Jesus promising to lead when people follow him; and so on. I don’t notice a stark conceptual break from the original trust/fidelity reading of pisteuo quite like exists in the writings of Augustine, for instance. In fact, the context lends stronger support to the original reading — upon being healed, the person is told it was because of their trust in God that the miracle happened; this makes more sense to me than an esoteric and historically new notion of “faith in God.” I’m sticking with trustworthiness/trueness/fidelity for my interpretation of pisteuon.
eis [in]: into/to/in/for (time)/toward/in regard to/for (purpose of). This word connects with pisteuon, so we’ll have to consider it in the compound pisteuon eis. And now we have a translation issue: scholars debate this variant as being present in the exemplar text or being added later because of how infrequently eis auton appears in the rest of the Greek New Testament. Bruce Metzger outlines significant textual problems in deciding among the variant readings. “If [eis auton] is original here, the meaning may well be, ‘that every one who believes shall in him {i.e., resting upon him as the cause} have eternal life.’ In support of such an interpretation is John’s manner of placing an adverbial phrase with [eis] before its verb when the phrase is emphatic or metaphorical.”[1] Put differently, here is the conundrum: to whom does eis refer, theos or ton huion? Is this passage saying that trusting in God will bring life eternal? Or trusting in the son of God? Unfortunately, the original versions of this verse present an ambiguity that cannot be resolved. I’m noticing more ink being spilled over this word eis than any other in the passage. It seems scholars have really tried to parse this and remain divided over how to interpret it.
auton [him]: him/her/it. (See eis above; auton may be referencing theos or it may be referencing huion, and the debate isn’t settled. When it isn’t clear in Greek, it’s no more clear in English; we can’t fix this with translation.)
me [not]: I’m able to understand this word better by thinking of its partner in Spanish, no. While the Spanish no can be translated into English as “no,” it serves many important grammatical functions that communicate the negative, negation, inaction, and the like. For example, the phrase “I don’t want to leave” would be translated into Spanish as no quiero irme or no quiero salir. The word no negates the verb action whereas in English we use a verb “to do” to achieve this expression. The Greek me works like the Spanish no, but also may introduce a question when a negative answer is expected, like we do in English and Spanish: “Black licorice has a mild taste, no?” Additionally, me can function as an intensifier for the strong negative in certain sentences — English tends to intensify negatives with phrases like “by no means” or “not at all.” In the present passage, we must see what meis attached to, which is the following word, a verb, apoletai. The construction is no apoletai, making me a simple syntactical negative.
apoletai [perish]: (aorist middle subjunctive third-person of apollumi) — to destroy utterly/to kill/to destroy/to lose/to perish/to die/to be destroyed/to be lost/to let perish/to pass away. Here is a complicated word due to its conjugation and its many nuances of expression. I notice quite a large difference between being utterly destroyed and being lost — how is this supposed to be translated here? Already I’m afraid the translations have been overly reflecting the theological biases of the various translators, and even in a strict linguistic approach of trying to render apoletai, we’d still be stuck in scanning the surrounding text for literary context for what the writers wished to express with this word.
Let’s first break down the verb construction of apoletai: this is a conjugate of the aorist tense, which in Greek is the straightforward past tense we use in English: aorist conjugations are used to express a completed action in the past, not an imperfect (meaning incomplete but nevertheless past) action. This word also is conjugated in the middle voice. In English, we have active and passive voice, but no middle voice; for example, we may say “She reads books” (active) or “Books are read by her” (passive). The active voice assigns the action directly to the subject of the action; in this example, “She” does the “read[ing].” But in the passive, the object receives the action of the subject: “Books” don’t do anything, they are acted upon. What about a construction where the one doing the action isn’t important (passive) but the speaker wants to indicate the object is participating still (semi-active)? In Greek, the middle voice achieves this grammatical notion, or “morphoparadigm.” This English example approximates a Greek middle voice expression: “She is having books read.” Notice the agent of the action is ambiguous (who is actually reading the books? it’s unclear); but notice also how “She” is participating in the action by “having books read.” In Greek, this is achieved with morphology — the verb is altered with suffixes. What complicates this is that ancient Greek dialects present different conjugation patterns: the Attic, Homeric, and Koine dialects look different from each other in the aorist middle voices. Fun.
We also have to recognize how the word apoletai is subjunctive. We do have the subjunctive in English, but many speakers don’t use it or recognize it. Consider the phrase, “I wish that he walk that dog on the other sidewalk.” Many English speakers would likely render it without the subjunctive mood: “I wish he would walk that dog” or “I wish that he walked that dog.” The subjunctive connotes a dependent action, in this example, the other pronoun “he” do something based on the subject “I” doing something. In Greek, the subjunctive is more directly expressed. “I want you to stay” is rendered more like “I want that you stay” in a subjunctive mood. The aorist subjunctive communicates this dependent action in a past tense: “I wanted (aorist) that you stayed (aorist subjunctive), but you left.”
All of these complexities come together in conjugating apollumi into apoletai. There’s the temporal setting — in the past — plus the subjunctive mood — dependent on another action — plus the middle voice — neither active nor passive. It’s difficult to find a straight rendering into English. Here are some possibilities, using the most common use of apollumi [=to destroy].
- that they not having destroyed [because of theos’s act of didomi]
- that they were not having destroyed [because of huion’s act of didomi]
- that they were not destroying-ed [by some ambiguous act]
Apply these conjugation possibilities with each of the associated meanings of apollumi, and you can see what apoletai might be expressing in this sentence. Quite a lot of room for poetic license as well as translation error. No wonder such stringent theological debates have arisen over the meanings of John 3:16.
alla [but]: but/except/nevertheless/only/yet. Rhetorically, alla posits an alternative to the dependent action of apollumi. The English prepositions “but” and “yet” serve this same rhetorical function just fine.
eche [will have]: (present active subjunctive third-person of echo) — to have/to possess/to seize/to bear/to wear/to be able to/to understand/to belong to/to cling to/to be close to/to be connected with/to be held. As with the subjunctive mood expressed in apoletai, eche expresses a dependent action. The statement presents no apoletai [=they were not destroying-ed] and eche [=they have] as two dependent actions, one maybe not happening (because of being phrased in the negative) and one maybe happening (because of being phrased in the present active). I don’t detect much exposition surrounding the use of eche in the original passage, whereas other instances of echo in other Greek texts that suggest other meanings generally offer more contextual detail. I take the most common meaning of echo [=to have] as being the most likely intention of the exemplar speaker.
zoen [life]: life/existence/living/property/lifestyle/Eve/desire/ambition. Aside from the Greek zoe being used as a proper name transliteration of the Hebrew for Eve (how curious would it be for the original speaker of John 3:16 to have been thinking of Eve in this instance…), the alternative meanings of zoen strike me as more openings for theological assumptions to have been retrojected onto this word. It’s altogether different to say “that they have property” versus “that they have existence.” And yet, zoe can reasonably connote either. But John 3:16 doesn’t employ zoe in isolation; the Gospel of John is replete with references to zoen aionion, so to keep this instance in its larger literary context, we should consider those other references and the stories they’re telling to center on a predominant meaning the speaker most likely intended. Throughout the gospel, Jesus juxtaposes zoen aionion with death, so it’s fair to take the first meanings of zoe [=life/existence], since zoe as property, lifetyle, desire, ambition don’t make sense within these other contexts. I don’t see the rhetorical stylings of this particular passage as trying to emphasize a departure from the rest of the gospel, or some other kind of exception, so I’m comfortable with “life” or “existence” or “being” for being the intended meaning of this word.
aionion [eternal]: everlasting/eternal/without beginning/without end. This adjective modifies zoe, and the many instances of aionios throughout Greek literature consistently connote a neverending duration, a timelessness. The directness of the Greek zoen aionion resembles less a category of existence (the way Christians today employ “eternal life” as a kind of salvific gift, a status of being saved in the hereafter), and more a straightforward description of “life” that doesn’t begin or doesn’t end. Because of the theological baggage that has been accumulated under “eternal life” in English (and for myself as a Latter-day Saint), I prefer “everlasting life” or “everlasting existence” or “neverending being.”
Translations of John 3:16
Now that we’ve explored each word from the verse in both its historical and literary contexts, we can entertain several translations, each drawn from awareness of the original textual artifact, the original speaker(s), the literary styles and expressions available to the original speaker(s), and the nuances of meaning within each original Greek word:
- Since the god exceedingly loved the cosmos, he offered the one-of-a-kind son that everyone who trusts in him were not having destroyed but have everlasting life.
- Since the god prized the cosmos so much, he offered the lone son that everyone who trusts in him were not having let die but have neverending being.
- Since God loved humankind, therefore it sent the lone-kind son that all who trust in it were not having lost yet possess everlasting existence.
- For in this way that the God valued order therefore he sent the singular son so all who trust in him not be themselves annihilated but possess neverending life.
Our tendency is to read constructions like these and want to style them with a better aesthetic, but I prefer doing this work of discerning the original language so that I don’t effectively erase meanings by limiting the passage to an English aesthetic — an aesthetic that did not exist at the time of composition. Our exegesis is better informed by breaking ourselves out of our comfortable devotional space, by pressuring ourselves to consider the foreign worlds of Jesus’s time and the times of his followers three generations removed who talked to each other about Jesus’s teachings. With this tighter rendition of John 3:16, we can begin to ask the theological questions we waited so patiently to ask, which I plan to do next time.
- Bruce Manning Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 175.