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 19:13
The Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. Another gloss, in the other direction.
John 19:13, in every translation this tool compares.
Writing the Underground, or as Americans say the subway tells a reader where you think they live.
Because here John gives the Greek name first and then the Semitic one, which is the reverse of his usual order and tells you which name his readers would recognise.
Every version keeps both names.
Γαββαθά Gabbatha · G1042
Lithostrotos is Greek for a stone pavement. Gabbatha is Aramaic, probably meaning a ridge or height, and it is not a translation of the Greek but a different name for the same place. John calls it Hebrew, which in this period regularly means Aramaic.
Nothing is lost. The reversal of order and the fact that the two names are not equivalents are the details worth noticing.
When a writer gives two names for one place, check whether the second translates the first or merely renames it. Often it renames.
Both names are printed in every version; Aramaic appears in modern footnotes where the text says Hebrew.
- John's other glosses: 1:38, 41-42; 9:7; 19:17; 20:16
- Hebraisti used of Aramaic in this period
- Gabbatha not a translation of lithostrotos
