Observations from the Greek text in John's Gospel: 1:14

Let’s take a look at a few things from the Greek in John 1:14.  First, let’s look at my translation of verse 14.

14 Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας.

14 And the Word became flesh and he pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the One and Only from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The first thing one will see is “and he pitched a tent among us”.  σκηνόω literally means “to pitch a tent”, but figuratively, it means “to live” as in “among others”.  Its cognate noun is σκηνή which means “tent”.

Another thing to look at is μονογενής.  The word formed from μόνος (only/along) and γένος (kind).  Together, they form something like “a one of a kind” or “a unique one”.  I’ve chosen to express μονογενής as “the One and Only”, which I think fits Jesus very well.  What is unfortunate, it that the translators of the KJV didn’t understand this word.  They thought that the last part of the word came from γεννάω which means “to become a parent of” or “beget”.  Thankfully, modern scholarship and more ancient witnesses of this word have been able to provide its proper meaning.  We will see this word again in a future blog.

Last of all, let’s introduce everyone to the preposition παρὰ.  Here, παρὰ (from) is pared with the genitive form πατρός (Father).  Why look at a preposition?  Well, I’ve noticed that a lot of comments are made on this preposition in order to back up one’s theology.  Everyone can’t be correct.  The most important thing to do is to investigate how John used it.  So, we are going look at it now and will touch on it as we find its use in John’s Gospel.

As I said, παρά is a Greek preposition, but has different meaning when combined with different inflected nouns or objects of the preposition.  With a genitive noun, it carries the meaning “from” as in “from a source”.  In this case, the Word is the One and Only from the Father.  That is, he went from the Father’s presence to mankind’s presence.  This will become quite clear from the context of John’s Gospel as we proceed.

With a dative object, παρά carries the sense of “in the presence of” or “with” or perhaps “beside”.  Of course, there are other nuances with the dative, but we have to see how John uses the preposition, not other writers of the NT.

With the accusative, παρά carries the sense of “along side of”.  For example: περιπατεῖν παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν (to walk along side of the sea).

As one can see, παρά always seems to have a sense of proximity when used literally.  It can also be used figuratively as Paul does so many times in his letters, but even then, it could still be within realm of “proximity”.

Now we are going to be fair in this.  We will look at all angles, but at the end of the day, context is king and is going to rule.

We will discuss “grace and truth” in the next blog when dealing with the Jewish law.

Observations from the Greek text in John's Gospel: 1:1

In an earlier post, I decided to blog on the Greek text of John’s Gospel.  So where to start?  How about the 1st and most famous verse in the Gospel?  Here it is:

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

In the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Let’s look at the to be verbs first.  In this case, all of the verbs are ἦν (was).  But this imperfect Greek verb doesn’t just carry a past tense, it also carries a continual aspect.  That is, the action that was done in the past, was a continual action.  

In 1a, “In the beginning, the Word was continually”, or “There continually was the Word”.  

The same can be said about 1b: “The Word was continually with God”.  Many commentators like to comment that πρὸς really means “to, towards”, but there are plenty of times in the NT where it means what almost all translations have: “with”.

Our last phrase in 1c has been commented on since it was first written.  What does it really mean?  Does it just state Jesus’ deity?  Does it state that Jesus was (continually) THE God who was just mentioned in 1b?  Does it mean that “what God was, the Word was”?  Many commentators like to invoke Colwell’s Rule (just Google it) here, but we can’t be sure from this distance if that is what John wished to convey.  Of course, it must be established that this “rule” is something that John does throughout his Gospel.  As I have stressed in all of my teaching, what does the entire context of John’s Gospel have to say about John’s statement here?  Since John introduces us to “the Word” in verse 1, it serves as the introduction to the introduction (2-18).  Therefore, to clearly understand John’s statement, we probably shouldn’t rely on a rule that was established  in 1933 for assurance of what we want John to say.  As I have said before, the context of the whole Gospel is the true guide.  That is something that we will explore going forward.

Finally, Koine Greek in the 1st Century was a language that was “all over the page”.  There were many different dialects, many different ways of saying the same thing, many different meanings to the Greek vocabulary used in the NT, and many different writing styles.  We have very simple Greek used in John’s Gospel to very elegant Greek used in Luke and Acts, and everything in between.  We will read John’s Gospel for what it is.  We will try to not go in with preconceived notions of what the text says.  We will let John speak for himself.  I will not be offering a new translation either.  There are plenty of very good modern translations out there for people to read.  There is no doubt that I will be commented on the controversial passages, but I also want to point out some normal “stuff” about this Gospel as well.  

In the end, “good ole” common sense is going to rule the day, that is, we will let John speak and we will observe what he has to say about Jesus.

God bless!

John's Gospel in Greek

I'm reading John's Gospel in Greek.  Although I've read a great deal of it in Greek already, this is my first time to go all the way through it with trying to translate any of it.  So, the first thing that I will say about chapter one is that the Greek is very simple.  This probably contributed to the Gospel being very popular early.  I will be blogging on some of my observations of the Greek text, so stay tuned!