Revealed to Whom? (John 3:21)

I often get questions from students about the best translation of some verse. Usually, the difference is between "literal" translation (such as ESV or NASB) and "dynamic" translation (such as the NIV or NLT). These two types are also called "formal" (because they try, when possible, to follow the forms and word order of the original Greek or Hebrew sentences) and "functional" (because they try to preserve the function or meaning of a whole sentence). Another way that these two types of translations are sometimes characterized is "word-for-word" and "thought-for-thought." A good book that clearly and succinctly explores these two translation philosophies is How to Choose a Translation For All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee and Mark Strauss.

A recent question emailed to me about the translation of John 3:21 reveals the difference in approaches. The underlined phrase in each (below) is a translation of the underlined Greek verb.

Greek: ὁ δὲ ποιῶν τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἔρχεται πρὸς τὸ φῶς, ἵνα φανερωθῇ αὐτοῦ τὰ ἔργα ὅτι ἐν θεῷ ἐστιν εἰργασμένα.
My formal translation: But the one who does the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be revealed that they are worked in God.
ESV: But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.
NLT: But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.

There are several differences between the translations, but the most important one is who the works are revealed to. The ESV (and other formal translations, like the NASB) leaves it unclear, but the first impression of most readers is that the works are revealed to God. The NLT (and some other functional translations like the CEV) specifies that the works are revealed to other people.

Part of the change that the NLT makes is converting the Greek passive "may be seen" into an active "so that others can see." It is common for functional translations to convert passive verbs to active for greater clarity. Nothing wrong with that - formal translations sometimes do the same to make more sense in English (Matt 5:7, for example). In this verse, converting the passive "may be seen" to an active verb requires specifying who it is revealed to. Should it be translated "so that God can see" or "so that others can see"? If the sentence was ambiguous in Greek, it would be best to leave it ambiguous in English, or maybe pick the most likely one and put the other choice in a footnote.

However, it turns out that this verse was not ambiguous to a native Greek speaker. The Greek verb for reveal in this verse is phaneroo (φανερόω). Elsewhere in John, and in general throughout the NT, phaneroo refers to revelation to humans, not to God (John 2:11, 7:4, 9:3, 17:6, 21:1). Knowing this, the translators of the NLT decided to make it clear in the translation that the the works are revealed to other people. 

While there are good reasons to have "literal" translations like the ESV, it is interesting that in this case, the NLT more clearly communicates the meaning of the sentence by being less "literal."

The picture: John 3:21, from the fourth-century manuscript Codex Sinaiticus. You can see that the scribe accidentally skipped most of verse 21, but the corrector added it into the margin.

Most Popular Post: Nicodemus and the Samaritan Woman

My blog normally gets twenty to thirty hits per day. But in the last week, I have received more and more hits, until today, there are over 150 hits (according to Google Analytics).

It turns out that almost all the new hits are basically the same profile: someone googles "Nicodemus vs. the Samaritan woman" or some variation, and for some reason Google lists my post on that topic in first place.

So here's my question: are there always a hundred people per day googling about comparisons between Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, and Google just recently noticed my blog post on that topic? Or is there some reason that hundreds of people suddenly became interested in this comparison? Maybe the passage came up in some church's lectionary cycle? A new documentary on Jesus that talked about Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman?

Jesus and Nicodemus (John 3)

Confrontation/Replacement/Fullfillment: In most scenes in John 1-12, Jesus confronts, replaces or fulfills some significant element of first-century Judaism. Here, Jesus faces Nicodemus, "the teacher of Israel" (3:10). Jesus is greater than this great teacher - Nicodemus cannot even really understand what Jesus is talking about.

Flashbacks: Misunderstanding, Life, Revelation

Misunderstanding: In John 1, "the darkness did not understand the light." In John 3, Nicodemus arrives at night, and misunderstands Jesus. When Jesus says "You must be born from above/again [anothen]," Nicodemus takes the second possible meaning, being born again, rather than the first meaning, being born from above. Further, he (perhapes jokingly) takes Jesus very literally rather than figuratively. Jesus intends to talk about birth from above, birth by the Spirit, but Nicodemus cannot get away from human birth. Human ancestry was crucial to Judaism, but Jesus says that divine birth is necessary to enter the kingdom of God.

There is a second element of misunderstanding in this passage. Jesus says that all those born from the Spirit become like the Spirit: no one understands their origin (birth from above) or their destiny (eternal life). This is like Jesus - throughout the Gospel, people fail to recognize Jesus' origin and destiny in heaven.

Life. Jesus talks about the new life that comes by birth from above, birth from the Spirit. He also describes the eternal life that will come to all who believe in the lifted-up Son of Man.

Revelation: Ch. 1 describes the Son as the only one who can reveal the Father. In ch. 3, Jesus is the only one to ascend and descend from Heaven , and the only one who can reveal "earthly" and "heavenly" truths.

Foreshadowing: Jesus compares his future "lifting up" on the cross to the lifting up of the serpent in Deuteronomy. The sin of Israel in the wilderness resulted in judgment through poisonous snakes. Ironically, healing came through looking at a bronze snake lifted up on a pole. Jesus likewise offers an ironic salvation: eternal life will come to those who look on and believe in one who dies an accursed death. Looking at the bronze serpent and looking at the lifted Son are both acts of faith: one must believe that God will give life through them.

Symbolism:

Dark/light: John may be drawing our attention to Nicodemus' arrival at night, in contrast to Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at midday.

Spirit: In Greek, pneuma means both spirit and wind, so 3:8 can be read as "The wind/Spirit blows where it/he wishes, and you hear its/his sound/voice, but you do not know where..."

"Born of water and Spirit" is a very difficult phrase; Christians throughout the centuries have had a variety of interpretations. However, water is commonly symbolic of the Spirit in John (see esp. John 7:37-39). Many John scholars today think that Jesus meant something like "born of water, even the Spirit."

Big idea: Jesus is greater than the great rabbis of Israel. He teaches Nicodemus that the primary requirement for entry into the Kingdom is birth from above, by the Father and the Spirit. That birth is granted to those who believe in the lifted-up Son.

The picture: Nicodemus, in Christenliche Ausslegung der Euangelienn by Johann Eck, 1530. Note that Nicodemus is wearing the appropriate clothing for a late medieval scholar, and that Jesus has a cool Trinitarian halo.

Nicodemus vs. the Samaritan Woman (John 3, John 4)

Nicodemus	Samaritan Woman
He is well-known	She is anonymous
He scrupulously keeps purity laws	She is permanently unclean
He is a religious leader	She is a religious outsider (even among Samaritans)
He is a great teacher of truth	She believes Samaritan heresies
He is a high government official	She has no power
He is morally respectable	She is morally suspect
He seeks out Jesus at night	Jesus seeks her out at noon
He knows that Jesus is a teacher from God	She knows that Jesus is a Jewish man
Jesus does not fully reveal himself to him	Jesus teaches her clearly that he is the Messiah
He does not understand the living water	She asks Jesus for the living water
He leaves lacking understanding	She leaves knowing who Jesus is
He hides his belief	She tells her whole town about Jesus

Notes:
Some rabbis believed that all Samaritan women were permanently unclean.
Jews viewed Samaritans as heretics: Samaritans only believed in the Pentateuch, which they had altered that to fit their beliefs, and Samaritans believed the correct temple was on top of Mt. Gerizim. There was also a history of violence between Jews and Samaritans.
Samaritans were probably not "half-breeds"; this view comes from assuming that the residents of Samaria mentioned in Ezra and Nehemiah are the same residents of Samaria mentioned in the Gospels. However, they are probably not the same people. First-century Samaritans are probably a sect of Judaism, which is how they regarded themselves.

Here are some more posts on Nicodemus; here are some more on the Samaritan woman; and here are all my posts on the Gospel of John.