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Jesus is at the wedding at Cana, his mom sees a need, and asks Jesus (well, actually tells him) to help. Jesus’ response is,τι εμοι και σοι, γυναι; (Jn 2:4). Word for word, Jesus says, “What to me and to you, woman.”

The translations really dance around with this one. “Woman, what does this have to do with me?” (ESV). “Woman, why do you involve me?” (TNIV). “Woman, why are you saying this to me?” (NET, with the footnote, “The term Woman is Jesus’ normal, polite way of addressing women [Matt 15:28, Luke 13:12; John 4:21; 8:10; 19:26; 20:15]”). “Dear woman, that’s not our problem” (NLT).

γυνη is Greek for “woman” or “wife.” It is in the vocative case as Jesus addressing her directly. It is not nearly so abrupt in Greek as it sounds in English. It is the same form of the word Jesus uses when he tenderly comforts Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb (John 20:15).

I am a bit surprised I haven’t been asked this question earlier, but I did just receive one about the different words for love in Greek. How many youth talks have been given on the different types of love, based on the different Greek words? More than I can count, for sure.

There are four basic nouns meaning “love,” and many derivations from these. I am going to rely on my Dictionary for the basic presentation of the data.

φιλεω was the general verb for “love.” It ha a wide range of meanings, stretching from hospitality to affection to love, even “to kiss.” It is not necessarily a softened form of love, and is used of God’s love for his Son and our love for God. For example, “the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does” (John 5:20). Paul warns the Corinthians, “If anyone does not love the Lord — a curse be on him” (1 Cor 6:22). Jesus loved Lazarus (John 11:3).

εραω (ερως) was basically sexual love between a man and a woman. BDAG lists it’s gloss as, “to feel passionately about, have a longing for, feel fervently about.“ It does not occur in the New Testament.

στεργω is more the idea of affection and is used for a person’s affection for others, for their god, or even their dog (see Verbrugge’s Abridged Dictionary of New Testament Theology). It does not occur in the New Testament except in compounds.

David wrote me about the use of μελλω in Rom 8:13. The question has to do with the relationship between μελλω and the use of the future. Are they the same? Any nuance differences?

Here is the passage. "For if you live according to the flesh you will die (μελλετε αποθνησκειν), but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live (ζησεσθε)" (ESV).

There is nothing in the immediate context of the passage that determines the answer to the question. V 11 may help a little as it is a conditional sentence and the apodosis has the simple future. "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life (ζωοποιησει) to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you" (ESV).

But there are two hints to the answer to David's question. The first is the parallel construction of the two verbs in v 13. "You will die" is parallel to "you will live." Both describe the certainty of the consequences of both actions, living according to the flesh and putting to death the deeds of the body. That in and of itself suggests they carry the same basic force: the certainty of a future consequence.

We had an interesting experience on the ESV translation committee when we were doing 1 Cor 13. We were working really hard on the passage, perhaps especially hard since it was such a famous passage. Famous passages are difficult since changes have a greater impact on people: “how dare you change my favorite passage!” as if we own the text.

We went through the chapter, watched our word choice, made changes only where we thought it was necessary, and especially watched the cadence of the passage. After all, the passage is read at thousands of weddings. It has to sound just right. Okay so far.

But when it was all over, someone (I forget who) asked a simple question. “I wonder if 1 Cor 13 is really poetry.” It was late in the day, we had worked hard, the passage was generally viewed as poetic, and for whatever reasons we didn’t answer the question and moved on to chapter 14.

But really. Is 1 Cor 13 poetry?

I have been thinking a lot lately about my personal mission statement. In past years, I never liked mission statements. They seemed to be unnecessary wastes of time when I could actually be doing something.

But when I went into the pulpit and a thousand different needs and many people presented their pet projects and needs, I realized that if there was not a focus in ministry there would be nothing accomplished. I was opposed to “church programs” as a general rule because so often they detracted from the most important things, but what were those “most important things”?

So I worked hard to try and focus on a Biblical mission statement — what was at the core of Jesus’ expectations for his children? I came up with this: “We exist to worship God; by proclaiming the glory of God, the supremacy of Christ, and the power of the Spirit; in the making of new and fully devoted disciples.” Pretty good, but too long for people to remember and it did not contain the Greatest Commandment, to love God and one another.

As I kept working on the statement, I came to realize two things. As the leader of the church, the mission of the organization had to be wrapped up in my personal mission, since it was my understanding of who I was and what Christ had called me to do that was controlling what I preached about. Secondly, there were two ideas that kept coming to my mind. (a) All things exist for the glory of God. (b) My life is to be changed: transformation.

As you lean Greek, you will be exposed to the whole issue of aspect. At first it is a little confusing, but after a while you will get the hang of it. But what can become frustrating is trying to be attentive to aspect, and then coming across let’s say an imperfect; you know it is continuous in aspect but you can’t see what the big deal is. This piece of knowledge doesn’t make the passage come clear, or zing, or anything else. After a while you start wondering why you are spending the time learning Greek. Does it really help?

There are several issues going on here, but before getting into them let me summarize aspect, especially for those of you who are not yet.

The essence of the Greek verb is not its ability to tell time. There is past, present, and future, but even in the indicative time is secondary to aspect; and outside the indicative mood there is no absolute time. The Greek participle, imperative, infinitive, and subjunctive cannot designate when an action occurs. All they can tell you is aspect.

So what is aspect? Aspect refers to the type of action that the verb is describing. The default aspect is “undefined” (it goes by several names). By default I mean that when the speaker just wants to say something happened (or happens), he puts it in the undefined. If in fact the action was punctiliar, if in fact it happened in a single point of time, the speaker will also use the undefined aspect. And so Jesus “died” on the cross.

I know this is a bit off topic, but someone asked the other day about the history behind my grammar and suggested that people might be curious. So for what it’s worth, here it is.

Rote memory has never been my strong suite. In high school I memorized tons of poetry and found it easy to do, but when it came to just individual words, well, I’m not wired that way. This made high school Latin especially difficult. What I discovered about myself, however, was that I like charts; and if I could lay things out visually in a way that made sense to me, paradigms and the such were much easier to learn. So I became the chart maker in Latin, and many of my fellow students adopted my charts in preference to our text.

I learn Greek at Western Kentucky University with a totally inductive text, reading the gospel of John. I enjoyed the exposure to the biblical text, but the lack of structure was the undoing of the class. Midway through the first semester we switched to Machen’s text and used both texts to get through the two semester class. And once again I started making charts.

I received an interesting question the other day from a Filipino brother. He had learned Greek and was starting to notice certain tendencies in his native translations. Here are the relevant potions of his email.

“As I try to further learn the Greek language, it inspired me to probe on the Tagalog (my countries native tongue) translation of the Bible. I discovered that we had two versions: Ang Biblia (1905) brought by the Evangelical Union Missionaries and the newer ones , Ang Magandang Balita (1970) translated by our very own Philippine Bible Society.  Now both translations, as stated in their prefaces, claimed to have based their translation work from the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts but as I work my way through the translation, I began to notice that our Tagalog translation of the Bible may have based it's work not on the Hebrew and Greek themselves but actually on the English Bibles (KJV and NIV)…. English grammar is VERY VERY different from the Tagalog language. Just for verbs alone, we don't have tenses but only aspects (just like the Greek). We also don't follow strict word order because we have verb "focus," a declension of the verbs that helps determine the main subject of the sentence, object, etc. This is the reason why I noticed the similarity of the English Bible with our own Tagalog translation. It seems to follow the same rules of the English grammar while it should have been following the Greek or Hebrew. Do most translations of the Bibles in other languages really came straight from the Hebrew/Greek text or are they mediated from the English Bible?”

There is more to this question than at first meet the eye. First of all, isn’t the idea of a “focus” declension a great idea? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to indicate, especially in a longer sentence, what the main point is? If Greek had this, it would make exegesis much easier?

I suspect that there is nothing harder to bring into English than a play on words. When that play on words branches (pun intended) into metaphors (and the question of how hard to push the imagery), and into the relationship between justification and sanctification, it moves from “hard” to “almost impossible.” Then add in John’s use of double meanings and nuances, and many translators go screaming into the night.

As a followup on a previous post, I was asked about the relationship between “prunes” (John 15:2) and “clean” (v 3). Here are the two verses; pay special attention to the Greek. “Every branch (klema) of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away (airo), and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes (kathairo) , that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean (katharos) because of the word that I have spoken to you” (ESV).

Okay, there are lots of things going on here. First of all, klema is not the normal word for a branch, which is klados. klema is more appropriate for the tendrils, the non-fruit bearing suckers that will never produce fruit and yet absorb life-giving nourishment. So the image is of the vinedresser removing anything that would take nourishment away from the fruit-bearing branches. (Qualification: klema is used for a normal branch in the context later on, so we should not put too much weight on this point.)

Secondly, airo means “to prune.” As you may have noticed in the comments to the previous post, there is some debate as to the precise meaning of this, but basic to the word is the idea of taking something away, not just lifting up (see references in BDAG, especially the references to meaning “take away” without any reference to “taking up”). The non-fruit bearing suckers are cut off. They will never bear fruit. The life of the vine (i.e., Jesus) is intended only for those branches that can and will bear fruit. (In an interesting parallel, John 13:10, Jesus earlier said that the disciples are already clean (katharos), but not all, meaning Judas, the “son of perdition.”)

Now starts the play on words. Those branches that are able to bear fruit because of the vine need to be pruned. If they are not pruned, they will not be nearly as fruitful. But kathairo has an interesting semantic range. It can be used in a physical sense of pruning, but it can also mean “to clean” such as when you sweep a floor clean (see BDAG). Jesus is starting to make the shift from a physical truth to his true intent of making a spiritual truth. He is concerned with the spiritual purity and fruitfulness of his followers.

Jesus has just chastised Nicodemus for not understanding, and then he adds v 13. “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (ESV). This is the normal translation of ei me. The source of Jesus heavenly knowledge is the fact that he descended from heaven.

But notice the problem with timing. No one has ascended (past time) except the Incarnate Jesus who has descended. But how can Jesus at the beginning of his ministry say that he has (past item) ascended? Did John make a mistake?

The NLT’s solution is to translate this way: “No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven.” “But” is the translation of the idiom ei me, which the ESV and most others translate as “except.”

The difference is significant. According to the NLT, Jesus is saying that no one has ever ascended to heaven and thus cannot speak with the divine authority he possesses. Jesus, on the other hand, descended from heaven. This hint at his pre-existence is proof of his divine authority to speak divine things. The question is, can the Greek idiom bear this meaning?