G25

• {"n":"John 11:3, 5, 36","s":"Both love-words, one chapter, the same relationship. Whatever they are doing, they are not ranking it.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=john-11-3-5-36","r":"John 11:3","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"No English version distinguishes them, and almost no study Bible notes that both appear here."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"If someone calls the same person **my mate** in one sentence and **my friend** two sentences later, you do not conclude the friendship got upgraded. Same thing here, except a lot of sermons draw exactly that conclusion."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Verse 3 uses phileo, on the sisters' lips. Verse 5 uses agapao, in the narrator's voice, about the same three people. Verse 36 uses phileo again, on the crowd's lips. One relationship, one chapter, both verbs."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English merges the two, so an English reader cannot see the alternation at all, and therefore cannot see that it does not line up with any hierarchy."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"Before accepting that two words rank each other, find a passage where both are used of the same thing. If the ranking survives that, it is real. Here it does not."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"There is no dispute in the text. The dispute is in the pulpit, and this chapter is the cleanest evidence against the claim that agapao is the higher love and phileo the lesser one. It is the same evidence that John 21 supplies, in a different book of the same Gospel."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03ad\u03c9 phileo \u00b7 G5368 \/ \u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03c0\u03ac\u03c9 agapao \u00b7 G25"}],"src":["John 11:3 phileis; 11:5 egapa; 11:36 ephilei","D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, on the agapao\/phileo distinction"]}
• {"n":"John 21:15-17","s":"Two different Greek words for love, and the sermon you have heard about them is probably overselling it.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=john-21-15-17","r":"John 21:15-17","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"No English version distinguishes the two verbs, because English has one word. Study Bibles and pulpits supply the distinction instead."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**He sipped his coffee, then he drank his tea.** Did the writer mean something by sip against drink, or was he just avoiding saying drink twice? Good writers vary words for the sound of it. Before you build anything on a word change, check whether the writer changed other words in the same breath."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Jesus asks twice using agapao and once using phileo. Peter answers all three times with phileo. The standard sermon builds a hierarchy out of this, with agapao as the higher divine love and phileo as mere friendship."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English has one verb where Greek has several, so the variation vanishes. That is a real loss. The question is whether anything was in it."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"Before building a doctrine on a word change, check whether the writer varies other words in the same passage. John does, four times over in these three verses, and nobody preaches on those."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"John also swaps two words for sheep, two for know, and two for feed and tend in the same exchange. None of those carry theological weight, which makes it hard to argue that one of the five variations is loaded and the other four are style. The honest verdict is that the distinction is probably stylistic, that the Septuagint and Koine use the two verbs largely interchangeably, and that this entry exists to show you what a divergence looks like when it turns out not to matter."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03c0\u03ac\u03c9 agapao \u00b7 G25 \/ \u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03ad\u03c9 phileo \u00b7 G5368"}],"src":["D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, on the agapao\/phileo distinction as a standard word-study fallacy","Carson, The Gospel According to John (PNTC), at 21:15-17","The parallel variations in the same passage: arnia\/probata, oida\/ginosko, bosko\/poimaino"]}
• {"n":"Ephesians 5:25","s":"Husbands, love your wives. The word is agape, and the word you would expect is the one that is missing.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=ephesians-5-25","r":"Ephesians 5:25","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every English version reads love, because there is only one word to use. The choice Paul made is invisible in English."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"You are writing a wedding card and you have two words available, one for wanting someone and one for standing by them. You pick one. The choice is the message. A reader with both words sees which you left out. A reader with only one word cannot."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"The verb is agapate, from agapao. Paul is writing about marriage, the one relationship where a Greek writer had eros available and might be expected to use it, and he does not. He reaches for the word he uses for God's love and then defines it in the same sentence by Christ giving himself up."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English love covers desire and commitment with one word, so the fact that Paul declined one of them cannot be seen. In Greek the absence is loud. In English there is no absence, because there was never a second word to leave out."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"When a Greek writer had more than one word available and picked a specific one, the choice is the argument. You cannot see that in English, but you can look for the places where the obvious word would have been a different one."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"There is no translation dispute. There is a reading dispute about how much weight to put on the word choice, and the answer depends on whether Paul had a genuine alternative. Here he did."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u1f00\u03b3\u03b1\u03c0\u03ac\u03c9 agapao \u00b7 G25"}],"src":["Eros does not appear in the New Testament, so the contrast is real rather than imagined","The same verb governs the whole passage, Ephesians 5:25, 28, 33"]}