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 15:5
Without me ye can do nothing. The preposition is closer to apart from.
John 15:5, in every translation this tool compares.
Without a coat. Apart from the tree. The first is missing something. The second is detached from it.
Because without in English suggests lacking assistance, and the Greek phrase is about separation, which is the image the whole vine passage is built on.
The King James reads without me. Modern versions read apart from me.
χωρίς choris · G5565
Choris means separated from, apart from. In a passage about branches being cut off, the spatial sense is doing the work, and without flattens it to lacking.
English without covers both absence and separation and defaults to absence.
In a passage built on one image, prepositions usually belong to the image. Read them spatially first.
Apart from me is how most modern versions read it; without me is the King James.
- choris at Hebrews 4:15; 9:22
- The branch imagery at John 15:2-6
- Compare aneu, without, which John does not use here
