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 13:34
A new commandment. The word for new means fresh in kind, not recent in time.
John 13:34, in every translation this tool compares.
A new car. A new lease of life. One means recently made. The other means a fresh kind of the same thing. English uses one word for both.
Because Greek has two adjectives for new and this is the one about quality rather than chronology, which is the difference between a commandment nobody has heard and one that has been renewed.
Every version reads new commandment.
καινός kainos · G2537
Kainos is new in kind, fresh, of a different quality. Neos is new in time, recent. The commandment to love is not chronologically new, since Leviticus 19:18 has it, and kainos is the adjective that lets it be both old and new, which is exactly the point 1 John 2:7-8 makes.
English new covers both, so the paradox in 1 John reads as a contradiction rather than as a play on two available adjectives.
A New Testament writer who seems to contradict himself about whether something is new is usually just switching adjectives; check which one he used.
New commandment is universal.
- kainos against neos: Matthew 9:17 uses both in one verse
- Leviticus 19:18 as the older commandment
- 1 John 2:7-8 on old and new
