G3779

• {"n":"John 3:16a","s":"For God so loved the world. So means in this way, not so very much.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=john-3-16a","r":"John 3:16","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every English version reads so. The CSB footnotes in this way. The NET renders it this is the way God loved the world, which is the only major version to force the issue."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**He so loved the work that he stayed late.** Modern ears hear how much. **Hold the brush so.** That is the older sense, meaning in this manner. English kept the word and quietly dropped one of its two jobs."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Houtos is an adverb of manner, not degree. It points forward to the clause that follows: God loved the world in this way, namely that he gave. The verse is not measuring the size of God's love. It is naming the shape of it."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English so does carry both senses, which is why the rendering survives untouched. But usage has shifted so far toward degree that almost no reader hears manner."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"The most dangerous English words are the ones that still technically carry the original range but have drifted in everyday use. Nothing looks wrong, so nobody checks."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"There is no dispute in the Greek. The dispute is whether a translator should override four centuries of familiarity to rescue an adverb, and only the NET has been willing to."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u03bf\u1f55\u03c4\u03c9\u03c2 houtos \u00b7 G3779"}],"src":["houtos as manner: Matthew 6:9, after this manner pray ye; John 21:1","Oxford English Dictionary on so, adverb of manner, now chiefly archaic outside fixed phrases"]}