1.2.3.10 Because God "gave
His only begotten Son.."?
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life."
John 3:16
The above is the King James "translation" of John 3:16.
If we were to open up the Revised Standard Version of the
Bible on this exact same verse we would find it now
translated as
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
son, ..."
What is going on here? The RSV is the work of thirty two
Biblical Christian scholars of the highest eminence backed
by fifty cooperating Christian denominations. They produced
the RSV in an effort to correct the "many" and "serious"
errors they had found in the King James Bible. So why have
they scrapped the word "begotten" from this cornerstone of
Christian preaching? The reason is because they have decided
to be honest with us when translating this verse.
The Greek term for "begotten" in ancient Greek is
"gennao" {ghen-nah'-o} as found for example in Matthew 1:2.
In the verses under consideration, however, the word used
was not "gennao" but "monogenes" {mon-og-en-ace'}.
"Monogenes" is a Greek word which conveys the meaning
"unique" and not "begotten." Thus, the true translation of
this verse is "His unique son."
Some of the more honest translations of the Bibles, such
as the New Testament by Goodspeed and J. M. Powis Smith
(published in 1923) have indeed given the same translation
as that of the RSV. However, such "tell it as it is" Bibles
were not generally met with a lot of enthusiasm since they
forced the reader to face the fact that much of what the
translators of the KJV have "translated" for them was not in
fact part of the Bible.
We have already seen in previous sections that the Bible
bears witness that God has "sons" by the tons. So what does
the Bible mean by "only son" or "unique son" when referring
to Jesus? It means what the Bible has told us and the Qur'an
has confirmed for us, namely, that Jesus was "unique" in
that he was born of a human mother without a father. God
merely said to him "Be!" and he was.
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