Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"The darkness comprehended it not" means the darkness didn't understand the light
"Comprehend" here means "overcome" or "grasp/seize," not "understand."
John 1:5, in every translation this tool compares.
"And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not" (John 1:5, KJV). Modern "comprehend" means to understand mentally; in 1611 the word could carry the older, more physical sense of its Latin root comprehendere: to seize, grasp, or take hold of, and by extension, to overcome or master. The Greek word behind it, katalambanō, has exactly that double sense in Greek too, both "to grasp/understand" and "to overtake/overcome," which is part of why translators have wrestled with this line for centuries.
Most modern translations render it "the darkness has not overcome it," a claim about the light's victory over darkness, fitting the Gospel of John's larger light-versus-darkness theme, rather than a claim about darkness's failure to intellectually grasp what light is.
