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 8:44
A liar, and the father of it. The pronoun could be of it or of him.
John 8:44, in every translation this tool compares.
He is the father of it. Father of the lie, or father of the liar? English keeps the ambiguity here too, and versions still choose.
Because the last clause of the verse is grammatically ambiguous in a way that produces two very different sentences, and English has to print one.
The King James reads the father of it. Most modern versions read the father of lies.
αὐτοῦ autou
Autou can be neuter, of it, referring to the lie, or masculine, of him, referring to the liar. The clause reads he is a liar and the father of autou, and both parses are available.
English it and him force the choice, and the neuter and masculine forms are identical in Greek.
Greek pronouns are often ambiguous between genders in the genitive. When two versions differ by a single pronoun, this is usually why.
The father of lies is the modern reading; the King James reads the father of it.
- The identical genitive forms of the neuter and masculine pronoun
- Metzger and the commentaries on both parses
- 1 John 3:8 uses a related construction
