ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων (John 1:4)

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Title:  In Him Was Life  and the Life Was the Light of Humankind

The text is, “ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων”.

ἐν -> preposition taking the dative for its object word -> in

αὐτῷ -> third person, personal, masculine, singular, dative pronoun -> him

ζωὴ -> feminine, singular, nominative noun -> life

   ἦν -> third person, singular, imperfect, indicative verb -> was

καὶ -> coordinating additive conjunction -> and

ἡ -> feminine, singular, nominative article -> the

ζωὴ -> feminine, singular, nominative noun -> life

ἦν -> third person, singular, imperfect, indicative verb -> was

τὸ -> neuter, singular, nominative article -> the

φῶς -> neuter, singular, nominative noun -> light

τῶν -> masculine, plural, genitive article -> the NRIEH*

ἀνθρώπων -> masculine, plural, genitive noun -> of humankind

The meaning of this verse is,

In him was life, and the life was the light of humankind.

*NRIEH: For the sake of clarity the word is translated into English, but to avoid such odd constructions as applying a definite article (“the”) to a substantive sufficiently determined by its being a proper noun, or by the use of a qualifier other than the definite article. An example would be the basic translation “Peter said to the Jesus”; the word “the” is completely unnecessary. There are many examples of this in the New Testament. The designation NRIEH is equivalent to “Not Rendered Into English Here”.

ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων (John 1:4) by Dennis Glover is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.