John 3:16- Begotten?

MONOGENHS is only used 9 times on the NT. John uses it 5 times in his writings, 4 times in his gospel, and only to refer to the unique Son of God in each case. Hebrews 11:17 uses it in reference to isaac, but the author does so in comparing Isaac as a type of Christ.

The other 3 were quoted by Eliyahu, and they refer to first-born children - not to Christ.

FA

 

I am afraid there might be any misunderstanding about my statement.
What I meant is that we should accept the conventional interpretation about Monogenhs as
the only begotten,which may mean the Only Born to the usual men like Luke 7:12, 8:42, 9:38, until we can have further conviction that it may mean Mono-ginomai.

In case of Luke, they are apparently meaning the only sons of their family,IMO.
Every one is darling sons and darling daughters in their families, isn't it?

 

Eliyahu,

Hmmm. The problem is that the lexicons all make it very clear that MONOGENHS is not related to GENNAO. It is not "only-born." To beget something is to bring it into existence or to cause it to become. A first-born child can be a MONOGENHS, because they are the unique child of their parents. BTW, in Luke 8:42 it is referring to an only child who was a daughter - Jairus' daughter. MONOGENHS can refer to girls as well as boys.

But we are just playing games with root meanings with such. The meaning of MONOGENHS is not "once-born" Zodhiates Hebrew-Greek key study Bible has a Greek dictionary which often breaks down words into their components. Now in general, we need to be careful, because that assumes some things about how words evolve that isn't true. It's referred to as the root fallacy - basing the meaning of a word on its root, where it came from and the component parts. But... I looked it up anyway - it does list the parts as MONO - GINOMAI. It has nothing to do with GENNAO. I know that some articles on the internet say that it does. That does not agree with any lexicon that I have checked out.

So this is not a matter of gaining further "conviction." It's simply a matter of looking it up in a lexicon - preferably the 2 most professional ones - BGAD and Liddell & Scott. The word means "unique, only."

When MONNOGENHS is used to refer to the 1st-born, the way it is unique does have to do with birth, and "only-born" would make some sense there. But that is not its meaning, in general. That is its applied meaning in a specific context.

So bottom-line: the word means "unique, one-of-a-kind, only." The question we should be asking ourselves is how is this applied to Jesus. IMO it relates to His unique physical birth at the incarnation, but perhaps I'm missing something. He is certainly uinque in that He is the only one who is the Son of God.

The meaning of this word is not about "birth." Can it be applied in that manner? Yes. How was it applied to Jesus? That is the question.

Anyway, that's why modern Bibles, with few exeptions, translate it as simply "only." IMO to translate it as "begotten" is a mistake because people have the wrong understanding of what that means.

FA