John 3:16-21 Greek Exegesis

INTRODUCTION

Unfortunately, translation and teaching of the Bible can impose dangerous views by using words and concepts of a language to capitalize on societal goals at the expense of the integrity of the original ancient documents for the sake of changing people's minds. One need only look at the holocaust and the way that the gospel of John could be viewed persuasively to support anti-Semitism to understand the value of preserving the ancient biblical semantic ranges or for promoting the freedom of all people to understand the New Testament in the original Greek language the way that their conscience dictates from entirely free spirited investigations of the text. Overall, the following paper will attempt to expose the range of meaning of the text and to construct a creative exploration of John 3:16-21 for the purpose of attempting to explore linguistic and epistemological possibilities that may not otherwise be considered by the strictly rational contemporary western mind.

Analysis of the Background of John 3:16-21

Barnett shows John as a disciple of Jesus, one of the main three pillars of the Jerusalem church along with Peter and James, the person that was very close to the historical Jesus for three years, and a person very active in Jewish missions.[1] Barnett argues even that Peter and John specifically constituted an inner circle closest to Jesus.[2] One could thus conclude that the gospel of John is the clearest revelation of Jesus Christ found in the Bible, and that it would have a Jewish audience since John was an active evangelist to the Jews. More to the point is that Kruse sees the passage of John 3:16-21 as fitting into the larger context of the work of Christ in the world as he titles John 3:16-21 as, "the evangelist's comments,"[3] and thus a person could see such a passage as being the most keystone passage of the most keystone Christian leader for explaining the purpose of the work of Jesus Christ for permeating the rest of the New Testament.

Barnett speculates that John does not have any literary dependence on any of the other gospels as close comparison shows that John was independent of the other three gospels.[4] Such a hypothesis would suggest that John would not borrow any of the stories or language from the other three gospels, but instead John would depend upon independent experience without collaboration in order to formulate what he would say. To this end, readers can easily observe that the gospel of John does not focus upon the events that Jesus had been involved with as the other gospels do, but instead the gospel of John focuses more on a contemplative level to show exactly who God is and who Christ is.

Unfortunately for the gospel of John, Harrington takes up the issue of the anti-Semitic language that John uses and the idea that the gospel of John should not be used in churches today because of its anti-Semitism.[5] Harrington however condemns the anti-Semitism that comes from a reading of John as being not a correct reading of the gospel.[6] One should note that just prior to John 3:16-21 describing the promise of salvation to those that believe in Jesus and the judgment of those that do not believe, Jesus is seen evangelizing a Jewish leader named Nicodemus in John 3:1-10 such that Jesus is seen giving him instruction on how to enter the kingdom of God. One could conclude that the historical background of the gospel of John is such that despite the warnings of judgment for those unbelievers, the gospel of John primarily is written to evangelize a Jewish audience and thus does not particularly hold to anti-Semitism.

Neyrey describes a standard model for writing in the ancient world that begun with Aristotle named epideictic rhetoric that uses both praise and blame.[7] According to Neyrey, the progymnasmata taught students to praise and to blame as a general model for education, and exposure to this can be argued to be influential in the making of the gospel of John.[8] The gospel of John does as a general rule divine a very sharp contrast between describing the rewards for the believers and pointing out the fault of the unbelievers as can be seen in John 3:16-21 as arriving at a sort of climax of justice and reward, but knowing about epideictic rhetoric can perhaps reduce the belief that the gospel of John is bigoted with anti-Semitism by its insinuations of the non-believing Jews as acting as plotting scheming villains that only seek the demise of the faith.

Commentary of John 3:16-21

John 3:16 uses the adjective monogene to describe Jesus Christ as the, "one and only Son" (NIV and NLT) or "only begotten Son." (NASB) Liddell and Scott define the ancient Greek root monos to be like just one of something,[9] and Perschbacher defines the adjective monos in the New Testament to mean, "Without accompaniment."[10] In the English language the term monotone would mean, "One tone or same tone" as this uses the same Greek root. The term genos is the second root in the term monogene, and it means offspring or a kind of race.[11] Genos would appear to be a distant cognate of the English word genesis, and genesis as a verb is like a brining forth of creation as is seen exactly as a proper noun as in the title of the first book of the Bible in the Septuagint. Proverbs 8:22-34 personifies wisdom as wisdom gives a Genesis verb account of creation as wisdom presents herself as being sort of brought forth from eternity (like being eternally begotten) and this is spoken about in a short monologue as it would foreshadow the birth of Christ as the only begotten son of God.

In John 3:17 the term krine as a verb is used in the NIV to mean, "Condemn" whereas the NASB and the NLT translate the word as, "judge." The noun form of the word krima means, "A judicial sentence."[12] Krine thus would appear to be the act of a judge rendering a verdict. The message thus that John 3:17 is sending is that God did not send Jesus Christ into the world in order to hand down a verdict of judgment upon the world, but instead he was giving Christ to the world out of grace.

In John 3:17 the verb sothe is translated by the NASB to mean, "Might be saved" whereas the NIV and the NLT translate this as, "to save." The word sozo is the principle form of the same word, and it has a wide range of meaning such as to save from extreme distress or danger.[13] For Carpenter the English word therapy is from the word therapeuo, and he then relates this to the word sozo in the context of salvation and then communicates the skills that Jesus has in this regard for working salvation.[14] By suggesting that a person might be saved, that is like saying that Jesus made the effort, did the, "therapy," but the results are yet to be realized.

In John 3:18 the term ou krinetai is translated by the NIV as being, "not condemned" but it is translated by the NASB as, "is not judged" and is translated by the NLT as, "no judgment against." The "ou" signifies a negation as in, "not" and krinetai is a verb form of the word krino that means, "To condemn in a court of justice."[15] The idea in using the term is that Jesus in the context is not going to render a verdict to the one that believes.

In John 3:19 the term krisis appears yet again and different Bibles will orient their use of sentence structure around this one word as it is one of the key nouns in the passage. The NLT uses krisis as the subject of the phrase, "and the judgment is based on this fact" whereas the NASB and the NIV basically phrase the statement as, "this is the judgment (verdict - NIV)." The difference between the NLT and the other two translations is that the NLT really emphasizes the relationship between the judgment and the problem that brought the judgment in case a person could not make that inference that the text would otherwise suggest. The NLT, being written for a more simplistic reader, is written more for a person that cannot intuit cause and effect relationships in complex sentences that imply those relationships but do not explicitly state them.

John 3:19 uses the word, "deeds" in the NIV and NASB and the term, "actions" in the NLT as translations from the Greek noun erga. Tomson translates the word as, "works" as he points out that the verb ergai means to work.[16] One could suggest that the term, "deeds" is used in the NIV and NASB in order to suggest a moral connotation to the word whereas the NLT uses, "actions" to make the language simpler for the reader.

Carson sees in John 3:20 a parallel to the phrase, "it may be seen plainly"[17] as he translates from John 3:21, and what Carson is suggesting is a type of exposure that the light causes to being a sort of revelation about regarding the moral component of what a person has done such that shame follows this exposure for the guilty.[18] The point to be made is that the imagery of the light is used to suggest a total revelation or like a total awareness of all elements of a person's actions or deeds. What is unique about John 3:20 is that the NLT uses the phrase, "refuse to go near" whereas the NASB uses, "does not come", and, "will not come." (NIV) A refusal to go is much different from just not going, and in this regard the NLT uses the strongest implication of personal choice in rejecting the light whereas the most literal NASB does not impose any personal choice by the language.

John 3:21 uses the phrase, "lives by the truth" in the NIV, "practices the truth" in the NASB, and, "do what is right" in the NLT. The most literal reading of this phrase is, "do what is true" as seen in the NRSV. Bromiley writes about alethia[19] that by etymology means, "nonconcealment", but he also denotes that the New Testament usage relies on the corresponding Hebrew term as well as non-biblical usage.[20] Bromiley supports his case by showing that the Septuagint had to use aletheia, pistis, and dikaiosyne just to translate the Hebrew term that alethia and the two other terms are used to represent.[21] What Bromiley is implying is that New Testament authors would be trying in a challenging way to communicate Hebrew ideas related to Hebrew words by the use of Greek words.

The Jewish reading of the Hebrew scripture would for example see the Torah as the law, teaching, and utterance from God. People could, for example, have a torah, as this would be like their own personal rule or teaching. The moral implication is that if a person goes against what they had been taught, then that person is sinning (God in this cause is the ultimate teacher that brings the Torah). The concept thus of truth in this environment would suggest both faithfulness and understanding together, so the way that John 3:21 uses the phrase, "doing the truth" should come as no shock to the Jewish thinking mind.

Significance of John 3:16-21

The danger of translating John 3:16 to exclude the reference to Christ being begotten is that people could be at risk for believing that Christ was a created being. Theological reasoning however concerning the language in John 3:16 could suggest that Christ was brought forth from eternity as having the same substance as the father (being of the same race), but to translate in such a way as to eliminate the possibility for a person that does not know New Testament Greek to ever come to this conclusion reduces the ability for orthodox Christology to be found in the text. Overall, the Greek text itself has clues in the language that support orthodoxy, but translating those clues would be near impossible without using the term, "begotten."

The danger is suggesting in John 3:17 that Jesus might save people based upon his process of salvation suggests that Christ sometimes tries and does not always succeed at what he attempts. The problem with such a view is that for Christ to be God in the flesh he must always succeed at what he does because otherwise something else like randomness would be more consistent and thus be more of a divine force because it would permeate more things than Christ. Overall, the fact that God acts as judge in John 3:17 really puts God in control in that he hands down verdicts, but even this cannot explain how God can be fully in control as 'God' without the person of Christ always completing tasks that are attempted.

Regarding God as judge in John 3:18, the implication is that everyone already stands condemned before God as a result of sin, but that those that believe in Christ will not have a verdict given against them. The point in saying this is that the wrongs that the Christians have done will still have existed, but the divine system of justice will never render a verdict. If a verdict is never rendered, then the negative results of justice are never felt. Such reasoning would not be supported by the NIV that would still give room for verdicts that do not condemn.

The problem with the NLT reading of John 3:19 is that by basing judgments of God on facts about humans what results is that the passage teaches people that God works by a cause and effect relationship. If however God made all of creation according to the consistency of his will such that the predictability of events pointed back to God's so that people could come to know him by his will being expressed in his design, then no real cause and effect relationship would exist. God's judgments would instead be based upon his creativeness rather than the rules of nature that he made or that we falsely observe (namely the cause and effect relationship).

Making a choice between using, "deeds or actions" to translate John 3:19 is very important for imposing the moral component of the things that people do that would determine their personal existence in light or darkness. If for example a person acted in such a way as to transgress God's teachings without realizing it, then the person would still be in the darkness but they may not have a moral component to what they are doing. Deeds suggest that people know what God's teaching is and that they act in accordance with it, or that they do not act in accordance with it.

The differences between translations of John 3:20 between, "will not" (NIV), and "refuse to" (NLT) cannot be overstated. A person's willingness to do or to not do something is just not the same as their refusal. Many children for example are not willing to go to church and to worship God, but they out of obedience go anyway because they do not refuse to go and their parents take them. If for example a person will not go somewhere, then they are not necessary refusing to go. If a person will not go, then not going does not impose any type of rejection to a proposition. Overall, the NLT translators clearly are capitalizing on salvation as depending upon a person's own choice.

The theological convictions that are really challenged by the language of John 3:21 deal directly with the concept of God's intended social and moral structuring of society through Jewish thought. By translators relating concepts such as truth, doing, living, and practicing, they not only run the danger of imposing a different epistemology based world view than what the author of the scripture had from a Jewish environment, but they also subject themselves to the risk of communicating concepts about righteousness and about truth that are simply not true.

Overall, the best application of the above considerations is just for churches to be aware of the hidden views that can be imposed by the translators of scripture and by those that would teach and preach the scripture. Using English words that have a different semantic range as what the Greek New Testament words have, gives rise to the fact that churches and even cultures can embed much of their own world views in the scripture by way of translating it and then explaining the scripture to others in light of their biased thinking. Individuals that are not well equip to make lots of careful judgments of the meaning of phrases and words in the New Testament should perhaps focus more on the general message that the scripture teaches.

Bibliography:

Barnett, Paul. Jesus and the Rise of Early Christianity: A History of New Testament Times. Downers Drove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1999.

Bromiley, Geoffrey, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. The Dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1985.

Carpenter, Eugene and Philip Comfort. Holman Treasury of Key Bible Words. Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000.

Carson, D. The Gospel According to John. Leicester, England: APOLLOS, 1991.

Harrington, Daniel, ed. S. J. Sacra Pagina. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1998.

Kruse, Colin. John. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2003.

Liddell, Henry, ed. Robert Scott. Greek-English Lexicon. London, England: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Neyrey, Jerome. The Gospel of John in Cultural and Rhetorical Perspective. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009.

Perschbacher, Wesley. The Analytical Greek Lexicon. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1990.

Strong, James, ed. John Kohlenberger III and James Swanson. The Strongest Strong's: Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001.

Tolstoy, Leo. My Religion. Mesa, Arizona: Scriptoria Books, 2009.

Tomson, Peter. 'If this be from Heaven -- ': Jesus and the New Testament Authors in their Relationship to Judaism. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press Ltd., 2001.

[1] Barnett, 299.

[2] Ibid., 300.

[3] Kruse, 53.

[4] Barnett., 377.

[5] Harrington, 9.

[6] Ibid., 10.

[7] Neyrey, 2.

[8] Ibid., 5.

[9] Liddell, 518-519.

[10] Perschbacher, 279.

[11] Ibid., 79.

[12] Ibid., 248.

[13] Strong, 1647.

[14] Carpenter, 300.

[15] Tolstoy, 23.

[16] Tomson, 317.

[17] Also NIV.

[18] Carson, 535.

[19] The word for truth in John 3:21.

[20] Bromiley, 38.

[21] Ibid.