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 18:28
Lest they should be defiled. A purity concern stated without explanation.
John 18:28, in every translation this tool compares.
A writer who explains one custom and not another is telling you which one he expected you to know.
Because the narrator assumes you know why entering a Gentile building would defile a Jew before Passover, and the assumption dates and places the audience.
Every version reads that they might not be defiled.
μιαίνω miaino · G3392
Miaino, to defile. Entering a Gentile dwelling rendered a Jew ritually unclean, which would have barred participation in the Passover. John glosses Aramaic words for his readers and does not gloss this, which is itself information about what he assumed.
The words themselves lose nothing. It's the background no translation supplies.
Track what a writer explains and what he does not. The unexplained things tell you about his readers.
That they might not be defiled is the majority rendering.
- Mishnah Oholoth 18:7 on Gentile dwellings
- John's glosses at 1:38, 41-42; 9:7; 19:13, 17; 20:16
- The irony of the scene is the standard comment
