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.
metanoia
Repentance. The Greek noun is about a change of mind, and the Latin behind the English is about penance.
Mark 1:15, in every translation this tool compares.
I changed my mind about him. That is not an apology and it is not a punishment. It is a reversal of judgment, and everything else follows from it.
Because the English word arrived through a Latin translation that pushed it toward doing penance, and the Greek is about turning your thinking around.
Every version reads repent or repentance. Some footnote change of mind.
μετάνοια metanoia · G3341
Metanoia is meta, after or beyond, plus nous, mind. The Vulgate rendered the verb as do penance, which shaped a thousand years of Western practice before Erasmus and the Reformers argued for the mind sense.
English repent carries sorrow and contrition. The Greek noun carries reversal, and sorrow may follow without being the content.
When a doctrinal word has a long Latin history, find out what the Latin did to it. A surprising number of English theological terms come through Jerome rather than from Greek directly.
Repent is the majority rendering in every English version. The argument is about what it means, not about how to print it.
- Vulgate paenitentiam agite at Matthew 3:2
- Erasmus argued for resipiscite, come to your senses
- 2 Corinthians 7:10 distinguishes grief from the metanoia it produces
