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.
zoe
Life. Greek has a second word for life as a span, and the Gospel of John never uses it.
John 10:10, in every translation this tool compares.
He lived a long life. He is full of life. Two different ideas in one English noun, and you sort them by context without noticing.
Because English has one word where Greek has two, and the one John chooses is about the quality of life rather than its duration, which changes what eternal life is offering.
Every version reads life for both Greek words. Nothing distinguishes them.
ζωή zoe · G2222
Zoe is life as animating principle. Bios is life as a span or a livelihood, and it is the word behind biography and biology. John uses zoe around thirty-six times in his Gospel and bios not once.
English collapsed the two, so a statement about a kind of life reads as a statement about a length of time.
When a writer consistently uses one of two available words, the avoidance is as informative as the choice.
Life is the majority and only rendering for both. The distinction lives in commentaries and footnotes.
- bios at Luke 8:14; 1 John 2:16; 1 Timothy 2:2
- zoe aionios at John 3:16; 17:3
- John 17:3 defines the life by knowing God rather than by duration
