ἡμεῖς οἴδαμεν ὅτι μεταβεβήκαμεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν ζωήν (I John 3:14)

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Title:  We Know that We Have Departed from Death into Life

The text is, “ἡμεῖς οἴδαμεν ὅτι μεταβεβήκαμεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν ζωήνὅτι ἀγαπῶμεν τοὺς ἀδελφούς ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν μένει ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ”.

ἡμεῖς-> first person, personal, plural, nominative pronoun -> we

οἴδαμεν-> first person, plural, perfect, active, indicative verb -> have known

ὅτι-> subordinating complementary conjunction -> that

μεταβεβήκαμεν -> first person, plural, perfect, active, indicative verb -> we have departed

ἐκ-> preposition taking the genitive for its object word -> from

τοῦ-> masculine, singular, genitive article -> the NRIEH**

θανάτου -> masculine, singular, genitive noun -> death

εἰς -> preposition taking the accusative for its object word -> into

τὴν -> feminine, singular, accusative article -> the NRIEH

ζωήν -> feminine, singular, accusative noun -> life

ὅτι -> subordinating causative conjunction -> because

ἀγαπῶμεν -> first person, plural, present, active, indicative verb -> we love

τοὺς -> masculine, plural, accusative article -> the

ἀδελφούς -> masculine, plural, accusative noun -> brothers

ὁ -> masculine, singular, nominative article -> the

μὴ -> negative particle -> not

ἀγαπῶν -> present, active, participial, masculine, singular, nominative verb -> one loving

μένει -> third person, singular, present, active, indicative verb -> remains

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

τῷ -> masculine, singular, dative article -> the NRIEH

θανάτῳ -> masculine, singular, dative noun -> death

The meaning of this verse is,

We know that we have departed from death into life because we love the brothers.  The one remains in death.

**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”.

CC BY 4.0 ἡμεῖς οἴδαμεν ὅτι μεταβεβήκαμεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν ζωήν (I John 3:14) by Dennis Glover is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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