Think Wink.

Continuing in my post series on John 3:16 and my new translation of the verse, I want to keep up looking into the Greek. Today I will look at the following Greek: hoste ton huion ton monogene edoken. First is the Greek word hoste. This term, like gar, is a conjunction that is joining God loving the world to the following phrase. So the way that God loved the world is being joined to the next phrase. Thus what follows is the way, the manner, in which God loved the world. Now, depending on the context, hoste can mean either: “so that, insomuch, that,” or “so then, therefore, wherefore.” Most translations that I have looked at translate this word as “that.” One translation, The Douay-Rheims Bible, translates this word “as.” I prefer to go with the translation of “that” for hoste.

The second word is ton huion. It is the masculine, accusative, singluar noun that generally means son or a son, usually a human being because in some places huios is used to describe animal offspring. If it were plural, it could refer to sons and daughters within one group, but since it is singular and given the context it is best to leave it as son. Here, huion has an article with it so we need to think of a specific son, the son, and not just any son. This is most likely a reference to Jesus as the Son of God or Son of Man, but the words alone doesn’t tell us. We need more to know what ton huion really means. All we know for certain is that it refers to “the son.”

The third word is the Greek ton monogene. Again it is masculine, accusative, singular and is thus modifying ton huion. This term will help us understand who “the son” is. Now monogene; is a word that is found only nine times in the New Testament. Hebrews uses it once to describe Isaac as Abraham’s only son. Luke uses it in his gospel three times, once to refer to a daughter and twice to refer to two different sons. So the term denotes being an only child, that there are no other siblings. The King James and those that follow Wycliff do it the most literal justice in translating it “only begotten;” but it can simply be translated as “one and only” or just “only.” The Apostle John uses it five times, four in his gospel (including John 3:16) and once in his first epistle; every time it is used to describe ton huion. The first two times it is used is John 1:14 and John 1:18. In that paragraph, Jesus is identified as the son who reveals the glory of God as the only begotten Son, or only Son of God. So following the Apostle’s line of thinking into John 3:16, ton huion ton monogene is the same Son found in John 1:14-18, Jesus son of Joseph of Nazareth who is called Messiah/Christ. Jesus is the Son of God.

The final term I’d like to examine is the verb edoken. It is the 3rd person, singular, aorist, active, indicative, of didomi. Didomi means “I give.” There are several ways in the New Testament understands this term and the meaning of “I give.” We will glean this from the context later. But let us focus first on translation. The verb is active indicative so that means the subject of the verb is performing the “giving.” The verb is aorist which means the verb is considered outside of time. However, the verb is not an incomplete action, we just don’t know when it happens. Aorist tense verse can be thought of as verbs in a photograph, it is a still shot of the actions as opposed to a video recording. It could be the action at its inception, completion, or somewhere in between. All we know is that it happened, its done, at some point. From the point of Jesus, it hasn’t happened yet, but it is as certain to him as if it has already happened. That is why aorist is usually translated as past tense. Aorist actions have occured at some point. Also the person and number is third person singular. So the verb should be translated “he/she/it gave” because it is past tense and an active voice. If it was passive it would be “he/she/it was given.” If it was middle voice, it most likely would have been “gave him-/her-/itself.” Now the question, as it relates to the meaning of the verb, is who did the giving and what was given? We have two options because the verb is third person: God or the Son. Because “the only begotten/only Son” is accusative, it is the direct object of “gave”. The Son was given. But “God” is in the nominative case, which is primarily the subjec, we must assume that this is the subject of the verb. So now it is God who gave Jesus. Now what does gave mean? Do not forget Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:14-15 when you come to John 3:16 (scholars also point to Genesis 22 as well). There we see that God “gave” the Israelites the bronze serpent to lifted up and all who looked to it would be healed. The best parallel would be that of Jesus being given on the cross and raised from the dead and all who believe in him will be saved.

Thus I would now translate this verse as “Thus in this manner God loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” We are about half-way through the verse trying to better ascertain the Greek of John 3:16.

James White on John 3:16-17

πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων

John 3:16 and Calvinism