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 19:17
Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull. And John says it the other way round.
John 19:17, in every translation this tool compares.
Two glosses in one chapter, in opposite orders, is a pattern rather than a habit.
Because the gloss is given in the usual direction here, Semitic first and Greek second, which makes the reversal four verses earlier worth noticing rather than accidental.
Every version keeps both.
Γολγοθᾶ Golgotha · G1115
Golgotha is Aramaic gulgolta, skull. John glosses it kraniou topos, place of a skull. Latin calvaria gives the English Calvary, which enters through the Vulgate and appears in the King James only at Luke 23:33.
Nothing is lost. Calvary being a Latin word rather than a biblical name is the part most readers have never been told.
When an English Bible has a familiar name that appears only once, check whether it came in through Latin.
Golgotha with the gloss is universal; Calvary appears only in the King James at Luke 23:33.
- gulgolta, Aramaic for skull
- Vulgate calvariae locus; English Calvary from it
- Luke 23:33 in the King James
