Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: chappell@vega (Glenn Chappell) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Born Again 101 Message-ID: Date: 25 Jan 91 05:46:26 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana, Math Dept. Lines: 35 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Y'all, I was doing a little research recently on the term "born again". I was rather curious because the New Jerusalem Bible translates it (in John 3) as "born from above". Further, the NIV, which renders it as "born again", has a footnote "Or born from above ...." Now, the NIV has lots of manuscript variation footnotes, but this isn't one of them - it's an alternate translation for the same words. I couldn't really think of any way the same words could mean either "again" or "from above", so I checked it out. Apparently, the word (and it is a single word in the Greek) used in John 3 does mean, literally, "from above" - or "from the top", "from the beginning" thus, by implication, "again". I'm not much of a Greek scholar, but it seems to me that the best translation, in light of all this, might be "all over again". Thus: "In reply Jesus declared, 'I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born all over again.'" (John 3:3 - modified NIV). Or, to think about it another way, consider the director of some sort of performing group, be it musical or dance, or whatever. He's running a rehearsal and things aren't going too well, so he explains what's wrong and then tells the performers to start over - he says, "Okay, everyone, from the top ....", and it no longer matters how bad the last rehearsal was anymore, because they've started over. [Note: you can't really take the analogy much farther than this.] So, then, that's what happens to our lives when we become Christians - we start over "from the top" with all our wrongdoing behind us. -------------------- GGC <><