Verses Lost in Translation 2: John 3:3

The fun of Jesus is how he ends a statement with a punchline or a payoff. These are frequently words with double meanings. The problem is that translators must pick one meaning and the second is lost. In this verse, it is not that the translation is wrong, but that it loses the key meaning that is important in all the following verses.

Here is John 3:3:

KJV: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
NIV: Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.

The beginning catch phrase, “Amen, amen I tell you,” (see this article) signals that Jesus plans to say something amusing or confusing. In what follows, the word “again,” is the one we are interested in. This verse is the basis for the idea that we must be “born again” to see the afterlife. But was that what Jesus said?

We get this idea from what Nicodemus, the man Jesus was talking to, said in response:

KJV: How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

What Was Really Said

But Nicodemus heard something different than “born again”:

Nicodemus Heard: When someone isn't born from further back, he does not have the power himself to see the realm of the Divine.

Nicodemus heard didn’t hear “again” but “from further back.” So, the person is old, and Jesus’s statement seems to be nonsense. Nicodemus’s question about crawling back into the womb was his rephrasing of that nonsense.

However, what is the other meaning of the word that Nicodemus missed?

When someone isn't born from above, he does not have the power himself to see the realm of the Divine.

It is not that Nicodemus was wrong, but that the Greek word has more than one meaning, and Nicodemus heard the easier one.

The Greek

The word translated as "again" could not have been heard at the time as “again.” It is anothen (ἄνωθεν), an adverb that means "from above," "from on high," "from the beginning," "from further back," "higher," or "more universal." Jesus only uses this word three times. It is translated accurately as “from above” in John 19:11. Except for two verses in the dialogue, this word is consistently translated in the Bible as “from above” (five times), “top” (three times), “from the first” (once), and “from the beginning” (once). Only in this dialogue, here and in John 3:7, is this word translated as "again.”

There is an extremely common Greek word that does mean "again,” and “anew.” It is palin (πάλιν). Jesus uses palin much more commonly than anothen, in twenty-three verses. More generally, palin is used a hundred and forty-two times in the KJV.

How often is it translated as “again?” Every time. If Jesus had meant to say “again,” he would have used palin.

Jesus’s Birth and Power

A simple reading of this verse in our own time is that Jesus was referring to his own birth. He was “from further back” and “from above.”

Does this mean that only such miraculously born people see the realm of God? It sounds like it from the Biblical translation. But Jesus didn’t say that they “cannot see” the kingdom of God. He said:

…he does not have the power by himself to see the realm of the Divine.