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 4:23-24
True worshippers. The adjective means real as against counterfeit, not sincere.
John 4:23-24, in every translation this tool compares.
A true friend. You mean a real one, not a sincere one. English keeps the sense and uses it less often than it used to.
Because English true has drifted toward sincerity of feeling, and the Greek word is about being the genuine article rather than a copy.
Every version reads true worshippers.
ἀληθινός alethinos · G228
Alethinos is genuine, real, the thing itself rather than a representation. It is the word behind the true light, the true bread and the true vine in this Gospel, where in each case something is being contrasted with a lesser version.
English true covers both genuine and sincere, and the second sense now dominates, so a claim about authenticity reads as a claim about attitude.
When John calls something true, he is usually contrasting it with a copy. List the other occurrences and the pattern becomes obvious.
True is universal; genuine or real appear in footnotes.
- the true light: John 1:9
- the true bread: John 6:32
- the true vine: John 15:1
