Fun With Greek (3)

What happens in English when you put two negatives together? They cancel each other out.

I can’t not go to the movies tonight.

For an English speaker, this means you must go, and it sounds weird to say it that way with the can’t not. This is the classic double-negative. In biblical Greek, however, a double-negatives don’t function in the same way. Instead of canceling each other out and emphasizing the opposite, they emphasize what they negate. This leads to their incredibly clever name: emphatic negations.

As you might imagine, this becomes fun for those who spend their time working on English translations of the Greek New Testament. What’s the best way to translate an emphatic negation from Greek into English? Should a translation stick close to the original even though it would sound funny or should it have the freedom to change the wording to get at what the original most likely means?

We have a good example of how the translators have tried to balance those options from John’s gospel.

The Greek of John 11:26 looks like this: καὶ πᾶς ὁ ζῶν καὶ πιστεύων εἰς ἐμὲ οὐ μὴ ἀποθάνῃ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. Roughly translated it reads something like: And everyone who is living and believing in me will not not die for eternity.

The translation sounds a little off.

Part of that’s because of the emphatic negation οὐ μὴ (ou mé). What’s the best way to translate οὐ μὴ? In it’s literal form the individual words mean no or not. And, as you can see from the rough translation above, it sounds weird in English to translate those to words as not not in the text, because that’s not how English speakers speak. Additionally, translating οὐ μὴ as not not ends up making the text say the opposite of what John intended.

This is smoothed out in English by taking the Greek emphatic negation and showing what it’s emphasizing. Thankfully, because we have so many great English translations, we can quickly see how different decisions have been made to get this point across.

NIV: and whoever lives by believing in me will never die
NLT: Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die.
ESV: and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
KJV: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
NASB: and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.
CSB: Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

For what it’s worth, I love those translations but, if I had to make my own, it might look something like this: And every person who lives and believes in me will never, never, never, never, never die—forever.

That’s an emphatic negation.

Fun with Greek (2)

One little word in Greek (and, then, a few words in English—depending on the translation) makes all the difference for how we understand a believer’s relationship to sin.

In Romans, Paul is writing to Christians about a large number of things that all revolve around who Jesus was and is, and what he means for their lives and the world in which they live. Just about halfway through his letter (in what we call chapter 6), Paul starts to address the truth that someone in sin is not just messing around with sin but they are slaves of sin. In fact, Paul makes it clear that everyone at all times is either a slave of sin or righteousness.

To put it another way, a person either belongs to the world or to Jesus; they can’t belong to both at the same time.

I think Paul wrote that section of his letter not to discourage, but to encourage his readers. And his encouragement is found in the way he reminds them of what’s no longer true about them.

The cool thing for the purpose of this article is that Paul makes that point with one little Greek word: ἦτε (ēte). In Greek, ἦτε is what’s called an “imperfect indicative”. It’s a type of Greek verb that communicates something that happened in the past.

In Romans 6:17b, we read this in Greek: ἦτε δοῦλοι τῆς ἁμαρτίας. Roughly translated, it says, “Y’all were slaves of sin.”

“Y’all” because Paul wasn’t writing to just one person; he was writing to an entire body of believers. And, in finally getting to the point of this short article, “were” because those believers are no longer slaves of sin. This was Paul’s encouraging reminder to them.

In the past—before their lives were changed by Jesus and they decide to trust in him—it would have been wrong to say that they were slaves of sin, because they were still slaves of sin. But now, due to the work of God in their lives, this is no longer true, and Paul shows that this is no longer true of them by writing: ἦτε.

One little Greek word that makes all the difference.

Fun With Greek (1)

Have you ever noticed how the first words of Genesis and the Gospel of John are almost identical?

Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God...”
John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word…”

We can see it plainly in English that it looks like Genesis 1 was in the mind of the Apostle John when he sat down to write his gospel, because of the way in which he uses the same language. John wanted to talk about the Word of God (Jesus) and the way he wanted to do that was to show his readers that the Word was in the beginning. What better way to do this than to use the language that a lot of his readers would have already been familiar with? They know how the story of God starts—with a beginning. And this beginning is one in which the Word already existed.

What might even be more interesting is to see how John didn’t just put the Hebrew language into his own words in Greek; he used the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and just about copy and pasted it to start his gospel. Let me show you.

Genesis 1:1 (Greek Translation): “᾿Εν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς…”
John 1:1 (Original Greek): “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος…”

Do you see?

John has used the same ᾿Εν ἀρχῇ (In the beginning) as Genesis and simply replaced ὁ θεὸς (God) with ὁ λόγος (the Word). This is not just a happy accident for John—this is intentional to show his readers that the God who was written about and was creating things in Genesis 1 is actually the Word he’s writing about in John 1.