Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
Learn how to read a New Testament critical apparatus and see major variants resolved by early papyri and Alexandrian witnesses with disciplined, documentary method.
The KJV and ASV translations of Gk (μονογενής monogenēs) in six NT passages (Jn. 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; He. 11:17; 1 Jn. 4:9), usually in the phrase “only begotten Son” (all the references except that in He. 11:17 are to Jesus’ relationship to God). Most scholars are against the legitimacy of the KJV rendering “only begotten” in the six passages mentioned above. It should be noted that John uses monogenēs nine times, while Luke uses it three times and Paul once.
The more difficult or awkward reading is often preferable. The reading at first will seem to be more difficult or awkward to understand, but after further investigation, it will be discovered that a scribe deliberately or mistakenly changed the text to an easier reading.
The text explores whether humans can see God, concluding that biblical instances describe mediated visions, not direct encounters with God's essence.
The critic would point out that John 1:18 clearly says that “no one has ever seen God,” while Exodus 24:10 explicitly states that Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel “saw the God of Israel.”
