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 21:15-17
Two different Greek words for love, and the sermon you have heard about them is probably overselling it.
John 21:15-17, in every translation this tool compares.
He sipped his coffee, then he drank his tea. Did the writer mean something by sip against drink, or was he just avoiding saying drink twice? Good writers vary words for the sound of it. Before you build anything on a word change, check whether the writer changed other words in the same breath.
Because this is the most-preached Greek word study in the English-speaking church, and it is the one most likely to be wrong. Learning why it fails teaches you the test you will apply to every word study you hear afterward, which is worth more than the passage itself.
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?
No English version distinguishes the two verbs, because English has one word. Study Bibles and pulpits supply the distinction instead.
ἀγαπάω agapao · G25 / φιλέω phileo · G5368
Jesus asks twice using agapao and once using phileo. Peter answers all three times with phileo. The standard sermon builds a hierarchy out of this, with agapao as the higher divine love and phileo as mere friendship.
English has one verb where Greek has several, so the variation vanishes. That is a real loss. The question is whether anything was in it.
Before building a doctrine on a word change, check whether the writer varies other words in the same passage. John does, four times over in these three verses, and nobody preaches on those.
John also swaps two words for sheep, two for know, and two for feed and tend in the same exchange. None of those carry theological weight, which makes it hard to argue that one of the five variations is loaded and the other four are style. The honest verdict is that the distinction is probably stylistic, that the Septuagint and Koine use the two verbs largely interchangeably, and that this entry exists to show you what a divergence looks like when it turns out not to matter.
- D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, on the agapao/phileo distinction as a standard word-study fallacy
- Carson, The Gospel According to John (PNTC), at 21:15-17
- The parallel variations in the same passage: arnia/probata, oida/ginosko, bosko/poimaino
