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 10:11
The good shepherd. The adjective is not the ordinary word for good.
John 10:11, in every translation this tool compares.
A good man. A good knife. English uses one word and you know which is meant. Greek has two and the speaker has to choose.
Because Greek has two common adjectives for good and John picks the one about being fine, fit for purpose, admirable, rather than the one about moral goodness.
Every version reads good shepherd.
καλός kalos · G2570
Kalos is beautiful, fine, excellent, fit. Agathos is morally good. The shepherd is kalos, the model shepherd, the one who does the job as it should be done, and the definition given in the same verse is that he lays down his life.
English good covers both and nothing is lost in accuracy, but the choice John made is invisible.
Where a language has two adjectives for one English word, the one not chosen tells you as much as the one chosen.
Good shepherd is universal; model shepherd and true shepherd appear in commentaries.
- kalos at John 10:11, 14, 32-33
- agathos at John 1:46; 5:29
- kalos of a fine work: Matthew 26:10
