Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
John 1:12
Power to become the sons of God. The word is closer to right or authority than to power.
John 1:12, in every translation this tool compares.
I gave him the power to sign the cheque. In 1611 that meant permission. Today most people hear ability. The sentence never changed. The word slid underneath it.
Because this is the verse people quote about becoming children of God, and the noun that governs the whole promise now means the wrong thing in English. It is also the model case for the entire semantic-shift category, which is the largest single class of King James misunderstanding.
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.
Modern versions read right, or authority. Power has dropped out because English power now means capacity, and the Greek is about entitlement.
ἐξουσία exousia · G1849
Exousia is delegated authority, the right to do something because someone with standing has granted it. Greek has a separate word for raw capability, dunamis. John chose the authority word.
English power slid toward capacity and strength. In 1611 it still covered granted authority, which is why the King James reading was accurate then and misleads now.
When the King James and a modern version differ by one abstract noun, check whether the English word moved. Power, conversation, prevent, suffer, let and comfort have all shifted since 1611, and the Greek behind them has not.
There is no Greek dispute. This is an English shift, and the modern renderings are correcting for it rather than correcting the King James translators.
- Exousia against dunamis: Luke 4:36 uses both in one sentence
- Oxford English Dictionary on power, sense of authority or right, now largely obsolete outside legal usage
