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 1:16
Grace for grace. The preposition normally means instead of, which makes the phrase hard rather than warm.
John 1:16, in every translation this tool compares.
I traded one car for another against I stacked one book on another. For and on point in opposite directions. One replaces, one piles up. The Greek word here is normally the trading one, and almost every English Bible prints the stacking one.
Because the phrase is usually preached as abundance and the preposition normally means replacement, and verse 17 goes on to describe exactly a replacement. It is the best example in the chapter of a comfortable rendering quietly deciding an argument.
And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
Versions read grace upon grace, or one blessing after another, or grace in place of grace. The spread is unusually wide.
ἀντί anti · G473
Anti ordinarily means instead of or in place of, as in a substitution. It is the preposition behind antichrist and anti-type. Reading charin anti charitos as grace piled on grace requires anti to mean something closer to upon or succeeding, which is a much rarer use.
English has no preposition that means one thing replacing another of the same kind in a continuous series. In place of sounds like a swap and upon sounds like a stack, and the Greek sits between them.
When a preposition is doing unexpected work, look up what it ordinarily means before accepting a rendering that feels comfortable. Comfortable renderings of prepositions are where a lot of quiet interpretation hides.
Grace upon grace reads as abundance and is the majority modern choice. Grace in place of grace reads as the new covenant replacing the old, which is exactly what verse 17 goes on to describe with Moses and Christ. The context supports the harder reading more than the translations do.
- Anti in the substitution sense: Matthew 2:22; 20:28; Hebrews 12:16
- The contrast structure of John 1:17, the law through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ
