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 3:13
Who is in heaven. Three words that are in some manuscripts and not others.
John 3:13, in every translation this tool compares.
Two copies of one letter, one with a clause the other lacks. Nobody forged anything. Someone either added a line or dropped one, and you have to decide which is more likely.
Because the clause makes a claim about Jesus being in heaven while speaking on earth, and it is absent from the earliest copies. If you want to see why footnotes exist, this is a short clear example.
The King James and NKJV print who is in heaven. Nearly every modern version omits it and footnotes it.
ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ
Ho on en to ourano appears in the majority of later manuscripts and is absent from P66, P75, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. The usual judgment is that it was added by a scribe making an orthodox point explicit.
Not a translation problem. English can print it or not, and the question is which Greek text is being translated.
When the King James has words a modern version lacks, the difference is usually the Greek text behind them rather than anyone's theology.
Modern versions omit it by a large majority; the King James and its descendants keep it.
- Absent from P66, P75, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus
- Present in the Byzantine majority and the Textus Receptus
- Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, at John 3:13
