G1096

• {"n":"John 1:1a, 3","s":"Was, and came to be. Two verbs one verse apart, and the whole prologue turns on the difference.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=john-1-1a-3","r":"John 1:1","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"English uses was for the first and were made for the second, which hides that both are ordinary verbs of being and becoming."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**The house was there. The shed came to be there.** Both sentences put something in a yard. The first one does not tell you the house ever started. The second one tells you the shed had a beginning. English can say this if it works at it. Greek says it with two different verbs and never has to explain."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Verse 1 uses en, the imperfect of eimi, to be. Verse 3 uses egeneto, the aorist of ginomai, to become or come into existence. John keeps them apart with complete discipline through the whole prologue: everything created gets ginomai, and the Word gets eimi. Verse 14 is the hinge, where the Word finally takes egeneto, became flesh."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English was covers both existing and starting to exist. Greek has separate verbs, so the distinction is built into the vocabulary rather than argued in a footnote."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"Watch which verb a writer uses for existence. If a Greek text alternates between eimi and ginomai in the same passage, the alternation is almost never accidental."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"No translator disputes the parsing. The difficulty is that no English rendering can keep the two verbs visibly distinct without paraphrasing, so every version loses the pattern and study Bibles have to point at it in a note."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u03b5\u1f30\u03bc\u03af eimi \u00b7 G1510 \/ \u03b3\u03af\u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9 ginomai \u00b7 G1096"}],"src":["The pattern across John 1:1-14: en at verses 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 15; egeneto at 3, 6, 10, 12, 14, 17","Standard commentaries treat the alternation as deliberate: Carson, The Gospel According to John (PNTC), at 1:1-3"]}