Core Glossary
Core Glossary — 3 John
This glossary consolidates every load-bearing theological term identified in analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md, drawn from the entire book of 3 John (a single chapter, 14 verses, coextensive with the core passage). Risk tiers follow the same Critical/High/Medium/Low framework defined in the baseline doctrine_risk_registry.json. Terms marked REUSED are already fixed in the baseline Romans translation_memory.json and MUST be rendered identically in this curriculum; they are not open for reconsideration.
Doctrine Key
- HOS = Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
- IMI = Imitating Good rather than Evil
- LDR = Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
- WIT = Commendation of Faithful Witness (Demetrius)
- TRU = Truth and Christian Fellowship
Glossary Table
| # | English Term | Greek | Transliteration | Dutch Rendering | Risk | Doctrine | Verse(s) | Notes / Rejected Alternatives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | elder | πρεσβύτερος | presbyteros | oudste | High | LDR | 1:1 | Rejected: “ouderling” — a fixed, technical modern Reformed office name; risks importing a specific three-office church-government structure onto John’s informal self-title. |
| 2 | beloved | ἀγαπητός | agapētos | geliefde | Low | TRU | 1:1,2,5,11 | Stable across Dutch Bible traditions. |
| 3 | truth | ἀλήθεια | alētheia | waarheid | High | TRU | 1:1,3(×2),4,8,12 | Johannine relational-sphere sense (“in the truth”) risks flattening into mere propositional accuracy or sincerity in secular Dutch usage; requires contextual reinforcement throughout. |
| 4 | to walk (conduct oneself) | περιπατέω | peripateō | wandelen (in de waarheid) | Medium | TRU | 1:3,4 | Established Bible idiom (HSV/NBV); habitual-conduct sense may be missed by secular readers without context. |
| 5 | joy | χαρά | chara | vreugde | Low | TRU | 1:4 | Stable, standard term. |
| 6 | children (spiritual) | τέκνα | tekna | kinderen (geestelijke kinderen) | Medium | HOS/TRU | 1:4 | Must be signaled as metaphorical/discipleship sense, not literal offspring. |
| 7 | to prosper / go well | εὐοδοῦσθαι | euodousthai | het [u] goed gaan | Medium | HOS | 1:2 | Rejected: “voorspoedig zijn/gaan” — risks resonance with prosperity-gospel material-blessing rhetoric. |
| 8 | health | ὑγιαίνειν | hygiainein | gezond zijn | Low | — | 1:2 | Ordinary bodily health; standard. |
| 9 | soul | ψυχή | psychē | ziel | Medium | TRU | 1:2 | Secularized Dutch usage narrows “ziel” to a vague inner/psychological self; anchor to the whole-person, spiritually-flourishing sense intended. |
| 10 | faithful (thing you do) | πιστόν (ποιεῖς) | piston (poieis) | trouw handelen / u doet een trouwe daad | Medium | HOS | 1:5 | Same root as “faith” (πίστις/geloof); must be kept distinct from saving faith — this denotes faithful conduct, not justifying trust. |
| 11 | brothers | ἀδελφοί | adelphoi | broeders | Medium | HOS/TRU | 1:3,5,10 | Register decision needed vs. gender-inclusive “broeders en zusters” (cf. NBV21 trend); flagged for reviewer confirmation. |
| 12 | stranger | ξένος | xenos | vreemdeling (with contextual gloss recommended, e.g. “reizende broeders die u niet persoonlijk kende”) | High | HOS | 1:5 | Modern Dutch “vreemdeling” carries strong contemporary immigration/asylum-law connotations; risk of unwanted political framing. |
| 13 | love | ἀγάπη | agapē | liefde | Medium | TRU | 1:6 | Broad, secularized everyday word; must be anchored to self-giving, deed-verified sense, not generic affection. |
| 14 | church | ἐκκλησία | ekklēsia | gemeente — REUSED FROM BASELINE (Romans TM) | High | LDR/HOS | 1:6,9,10 | Baseline rule: prefer “gemeente” over “kerk” for the NT gathered-congregation sense. Do not substitute. |
| 15 | to send on their way | προπέμπω | propempō | uitgeleide doen / van het nodige voorzien | Medium | HOS | 1:6 | No single Dutch word captures both escort and material-provision senses; pair with clarifying phrase. |
| 16 | worthily of God | ἀξίως τοῦ θεοῦ | axiōs tou theou | God waardig | Medium | HOS | 1:6 | Phrase carefully so as not to sound like a merit-based performance test. |
| 17 | the Name (Christ) | τὸ ὄνομα | to onoma | de Naam (capitalized; gloss on first use, e.g. “de Naam van Christus”) | High | HOS/TRU | 1:7 | Technical Christological shorthand (cf. Acts 5:41); must not flatten into a bare, generic “a name.” |
| 18 | Gentiles / outsiders | ἐθνικοί | ethnikoi | heidenen — REUSED FROM BASELINE (Romans TM), with contextual gloss | Medium | HOS | 1:7 | Baseline “gentiles”→“heidenen” reused, but note this occurrence marks “those outside the household of faith” (patronage-refusal context), a distinct nuance from the Romans Jew/Gentile-unity sense. |
| 19 | fellow workers | συνεργός | synergos | medearbeiders | Medium | HOS | 1:8 | Accurate but formal/dated register; test against target reading level. |
| 20 | to be obligated / ought | ὀφείλομεν | opheilomen | behoren / moeten | Low | HOS | 1:8 | Standard duty-language. |
| 21 | to support / receive | ὑπολαμβάνω | hypolambanō | ondersteunen | Medium | HOS | 1:8 | Prefer over bare “ontvangen” to retain the material-support dimension. |
| 22 | loving to be first / self-exalting ambition | φιλοπρωτεύων | philoprōteuōn | die graag de eerste/belangrijkste wil zijn | High | LDR | 1:9 | Rare NT compound (only occurrence in NT); reject any rendering via neutral/positive “leiderschap” or “ambitie,” which would soften the sin of self-glorifying pride into admirable drive. |
| 23 | to receive / welcome (a person’s authority) | ἐπιδέχομαι | epidechomai | ontvangen | Medium | LDR | 1:9,10 | Retain the sense of formally accepting a person’s authority/message, not mere social politeness. |
| 24 | to remind | ὑπομνήσω (fut. of ὑπομιμνήσκω) | hypomnēsō | herinneren (aan) | Low | LDR | 1:10 | Standard. |
| 25 | wicked (words) | πονηρός | ponēros | kwaadaardig | Medium | LDR | 1:10 | Preserve active-malice nuance; avoid weaker “verkeerd” or “onaardig.” |
| 26 | to talk maliciously / false accusation | φλυαρέω | phlyareō | met kwaadaardige praatjes belasteren | Medium-High | LDR | 1:10 | Rare NT word combining empty talk + damaging false accusation; a bare “onzin praten” loses the slander/malice force. |
| 27 | to hinder / forbid | κωλύω | kōlyō | verhinderen | Low | LDR | 1:10 | Standard. |
| 28 | to cast out / expel | ἐκβάλλω | ekballō | buitenwerpen / buitensluiten | High | LDR | 1:10 | Risk of conflation with legitimate, procedurally-governed Dutch “excommunicatie”/“kerkelijke tucht”; context must frame this as an illegitimate abuse of power, not a model of proper discipline. |
| 29 | to imitate | μιμέομαι | mimeomai | navolgen | Medium | IMI | 1:11 | Strongly positive-connoted Dutch term (imitatio Christi tradition); object (“het goede,” not “het kwade”) must be made explicit since the verse names a negative example to avoid. |
| 30 | evil | κακόν | kakon | het kwade | Medium | IMI | 1:11 | Retain moral gravity; avoid softer “verkeerd.” |
| 31 | good | ἀγαθόν | agathon | het goede | Medium | IMI | 1:11 | Retain moral weight; avoid softer “aardig.” |
| 32 | one who does good | ἀγαθοποιῶν | agathopoiōn | wie het goede doet | Medium | IMI | 1:11 | Compound verb rendered as relative clause; preserve habitual-character sense, not a single act. |
| 33 | one who does evil | κακοποιῶν | kakopoiōn | wie het kwade doet | Medium | IMI | 1:11 | Same as above. |
| 34 | has not seen God | οὐχ ἑώρακεν τὸν θεόν | ouch heōraken ton theon | heeft God niet [werkelijk] gezien / kent God niet | High | IMI/LDR | 1:11 | Johannine idiom for present relational knowledge of God, not a future/eschatological “seeing”; must not be softened into a merely metaphorical or afterlife-only claim. |
| 35 | to testify / bear witness | μαρτυρέω | martyreō | getuigen | High | WIT/TRU | 1:3,12 | Risk of unintended association with Jehovah’s Getuigen (Jehovah’s Witnesses), a prominent, doctrinally distinct Dutch religious movement; frame clearly as ordinary NT commendation/witness language. |
| 36 | testimony | μαρτυρία | martyria | getuigenis | High | WIT | 1:12 | Same Jehovah’s Getuigen association risk as #35; recommend a first-use gloss. |
| 37 | true / truthful | ἀληθής | alēthēs | waarachtig (preferred over bare “waar”) | Medium | WIT/TRU | 1:12 | ”Waarachtig” better carries personal-integrity/trustworthiness nuance appropriate to testimony about a person. |
| 38 | ink | μέλαν | melan | inkt | Low | — | 1:13 | Cultural-historical detail; no theological weight. |
| 39 | reed / pen | κάλαμος | kalamos | pen (or “rietpen” for precision) | Low | — | 1:13 | No theological weight. |
| 40 | face to face | στόμα πρὸς στόμα | stoma pros stoma | van aangezicht tot aangezicht / persoonlijk | Low-Medium | TRU | 1:14 | Reject literal “mond aan mond” — risks confusion with “mond-op-mondbeademing” (mouth-to-mouth resuscitation) in modern Dutch; render idiomatically per idiom-handling rule. |
| 41 | peace | εἰρήνη | eirēnē | vrede — REUSED FROM BASELINE (Romans TM) | Low | TRU | 1:14 | Baseline rule: relational/covenantal peace; standard closing epistolary blessing. |
| 42 | friend(s) | φίλος | philos | vriend(en) | Medium | TRU | 1:14 | Deliberate register shift from “broeders” (covenant-family term) to “vrienden” (intimate personal term, echoing John 15:13-15); preserve the shift, do not flatten both to “broeders.” |
| 43 | by name (individually) | κατ᾿ ὄνομα | kat’ onoma | bij naam / ieder afzonderlijk | Low | TRU/HOS | 1:14 | No significant risk. |
Summary Statistics
| Risk Tier | Count | Review Routing (per baseline conventions) |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 0 | — |
| High | 12 | Human theologian review |
| Medium | 22 | Native speaker review |
| Low | 9 | Automated review |
| Total | 43 |
Reused baseline terms (must not be altered): gemeente (church, #14), heidenen (gentiles, #18), vrede (peace, #41).
Highest-priority theologian-review items for Phase 2: #1 (oudste vs. ouderling — church office conflation), #12 (vreemdeling — immigration-politics resonance), #17 (de Naam — Christological shorthand), #22 (philoprōteuōn — must not soften Diotrephes’ sin into neutral ambition), #28 (ekballō — must not legitimize as ordinary church discipline), #34 (has not seen God — present relational-knowledge idiom), #35/#36 (getuigen/getuigenis — Jehovah’s Getuigen denominational-association risk, directly affecting the Demetrius commendation doctrine’s namesake vocabulary).
Cross-reference: See analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md for full verse-by-verse contextual analysis underlying each entry above. All renderings are provisional glossary recommendations for Phase 2 translation_memory.json integration and remain subject to the escalation and review-routing rules defined in the baseline 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
High Risk Terms
Elder
Approved rendering: oudste
Transliteration: oudste
Doctrine: Apostolic and Pastoral Authority (‘the Elder’)
Rejected alternatives: ouderling
Original: πρεσβύτερος
Category: Church Leadership
‘Ouderling’ is a fixed modern Dutch Reformed office title (alongside predikant/diaken) and, independently, the Jehovah’s Getuigen congregational office title; both risk importing anachronistic ecclesiastical structure onto John’s informal apostolic self-designation (3 John 1:1). Modern Dutch Bible translation tradition (HSV, NBG51, NBV21, WV95) has independently converged on ‘oudste’, giving external corroboration to this choice; only SV (1637) uses ‘ouderling’.
Truth
Approved rendering: waarheid
Transliteration: waarheid
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: ἀλήθεια
Category: Truth
In one of Europe’s most secularized societies, ‘waarheid’ defaults to propositional/factual accuracy. The Johannine relational-sphere sense (‘in de waarheid’ = within the shared gospel-confessional community, cf. 3 John 1:1,3,4,8,12) must be contextually reinforced at every occurrence, not left as a bare abstract noun.
Stranger
Approved rendering: vreemdeling (reizende broeders die u niet persoonlijk kende)
Transliteration: vreemdeling
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: bare ‘vreemdeling’ without gloss
Original: ξένος
Category: Hospitality
3 John 1:5. Modern Dutch ‘vreemdeling’ carries strong contemporary immigration/asylum-law connotations (vreemdelingenwet, vreemdelingenbeleid); always pair with the disambiguating gloss so the doctrine is not politicized.
Church
Approved rendering: gemeente
Transliteration: gemeente
Doctrine: Church as God’s People / Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: kerk
Original: ἐκκλησία
Category: Church
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE (exact match, unchanged). Baseline rule: prefer ‘gemeente’ over ‘kerk’ for the NT gathered-congregation sense. Applies to 3 John 1:6, 1:9, 1:10, the local congregation Gaius and Diotrephes both relate to.
The Name
Approved rendering: de Naam
Transliteration: de Naam
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: bare lowercase ‘naam’ (generic reference to a name/reputation)
Original: τὸ ὄνομα
Category: Christology
3 John 1:7. Technical Christological shorthand (cf. Acts 5:41); capitalize and gloss on first occurrence, e.g. ‘de Naam van Christus/de Heer’, to prevent flattening into a bare common noun.
Loving To Be First
Approved rendering: die graag de eerste/belangrijkste wil zijn
Transliteration: filoproteuon
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: ambitie, leiderschap, leiderschapsdrang, die de baas wil spelen (NBV21-style softening into personality-conflict register)
Original: φιλοπρωτεύων
Category: Church Leadership
3 John 1:9. Rare NT hapax legomenon (philoprōteuōn) with no single-word Dutch equivalent. Any neutral/positive-register single word would soften Diotrephes’ self-exalting sin into admirable ambition; the full descriptive clause, explicitly marked as sinful self-exaltation, must be preserved.
Talk Maliciously
Approved rendering: met kwaadaardige praatjes belasteren
Transliteration: flyareo
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: onzin praten (loses accusatory force), kwaadspreken (captures only the malice half, not the frivolous-talk half)
Original: φλυαρέω
Category: Church Leadership
3 John 1:10. Rare NT compound (phlyareō) combining empty/frivolous talk with damaging false accusation; requires the full phrase to retain both components.
Cast Out Expel
Approved rendering: buitenwerpen / buitensluiten
Transliteration: ekballo
Doctrine: Abuse of Ecclesial Power
Rejected alternatives: excommunicatie, kerkelijke tucht
Original: ἐκβάλλω
Category: Church Leadership
3 John 1:10. Dutch readers may map this onto the formal, procedurally-governed Reformed concept of church discipline, wrongly legitimizing Diotrephes’ unilateral action; surrounding co-text must include explicit illegitimacy markers (‘op eigen gezag’, ‘zonder recht van beroep’).
Has Not Seen God
Approved rendering: heeft God niet [werkelijk] gezien / kent God niet
Transliteration: ouch heoraken ton theon
Doctrine: Divine Knowledge Evidenced by Conduct
Rejected alternatives: bare literal ‘heeft God niet gezien’ with no contextual framing
Original: οὐχ ἑώρακεν τὸν θεόν
Category: Theology
3 John 1:11. Johannine idiom for present relational knowledge of God, not a future/eschatological claim about seeing God in heaven; must be framed to preserve the force of the implicit warning against Diotrephes-like conduct.
Testify Bear Witness
Approved rendering: getuigen
Transliteration: getuigen
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness (Demetrius)
Rejected alternatives: invented alternative coinage (would create a worse cross-document consistency risk than the association it avoids)
Original: μαρτυρέω
Category: Witness
3 John 1:3,12. Theologically standard across HSV/NBV/WV95, but risks unintended association with Jehovah’s Getuigen (Jehovah’s Witnesses); require a first-use contextual gloss framing ordinary NT commendation language, not the sect.
Testimony
Approved rendering: getuigenis
Transliteration: getuigenis
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness (Demetrius)
Original: μαρτυρία
Category: Witness
3 John 1:12. Namesake vocabulary of this doctrine; same Jehovah’s Getuigen collision risk as ‘testify_bear_witness’. Recommend the first-use gloss ‘getuigenis — een goede aanbeveling van iemands karakter’ in every Phase 2 lesson document.
Medium Risk Terms
Walk In Truth
Approved rendering: wandelen (in de waarheid)
Transliteration: wandelen in de waarheid
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: περιπατέω
Category: Sanctification
Established Bible idiom retained across HSV/NBV (3 John 1:3,4); secularized readers may miss the habitual-conduct sense without contextual reinforcement.
Spiritual Children
Approved rendering: kinderen (geestelijke kinderen)
Transliteration: geestelijke kinderen
Doctrine: Spiritual Fatherhood and Discipleship
Rejected alternatives: mijn kinderen (bare, defaults to literal biological offspring)
Original: τέκνα
Category: Discipleship
3 John 1:4 discipleship metaphor distinct from the baseline’s divine-adoption doctrine (‘aanneming tot kinderen’); must be explicitly signaled as metaphorical.
Prosper
Approved rendering: het [u] goed gaan
Transliteration: het u goed gaan
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: voorspoedig zijn/gaan
Original: εὐοδοῦσθαι
Category: Hospitality
3 John 1:2 conventional ancient epistolary health-wish, not a material-prosperity promise; ‘voorspoedig’ risks resonance with prosperity-gospel rhetoric in some contemporary Dutch charismatic circles.
Soul
Approved rendering: ziel
Transliteration: ziel
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: ψυχή
Category: Anthropology
Secularized Dutch usage narrows ‘ziel’ to a vague inner/psychological self (3 John 1:2); anchor to the whole-person, spiritually-flourishing biblical sense intended.
Faithful Conduct
Approved rendering: trouw handelen
Transliteration: trouw handelen
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: gelovig handelen (bleeds into the baseline ‘geloof’/saving-faith doctrine)
Original: πιστόν ποιεῖς
Category: Hospitality
3 John 1:5; shares Greek root with pistis (‘faith’) but denotes faithful conduct, not justifying trust. Must be kept lexically distinct from the baseline’s ‘geloof’ term to avoid conflating Gaius’s hospitality with the doctrine of saving faith.
Brothers
Approved rendering: broeders
Transliteration: broeders
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: broeders en zusters (NBV21 gender-inclusive trend)
Original: ἀδελφοί
Category: Church
3 John 1:3,5,10. Register decision recommended as ‘broeders’ for consistency with the collective hospitality narrative; flagged for reviewer confirmation against target audience norms.
Love
Approved rendering: liefde
Transliteration: liefde
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: ἀγάπη
Category: Fellowship
3 John 1:6. Broad, secularized everyday word; must be anchored to the specific self-giving, deed-verified sense evidenced in Gaius’s hospitality, not generic/romantic affection.
Gentiles Outsiders
Approved rendering: heidenen
Transliteration: heidenen
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ἐθνικοί
Category: Church
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE term ‘heidenen’ (exact match, unchanged). 3 John 1:7 nuance differs from the Romans Jew/Gentile-unity sense: here it marks ‘those outside the household of faith’ in a patronage-refusal context. Requires a contextual gloss for reviewers so the Romans ethnic-inclusion frame is not imported.
Fellowship
Approved rendering: gemeenschap
Transliteration: gemeenschap
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE (exact match, unchanged). Though koinonia does not lexically occur in 3 John’s Greek text, this term underlies the doctrine name ‘de christelijke gemeenschap’ used in Phase 2 curriculum prose framing the Truth and Fellowship doctrine; retains the baseline’s secular-civic-community collision risk (‘gemeenschap’ also means ordinary community).
Fellow Workers
Approved rendering: medearbeiders
Transliteration: medearbeiders
Doctrine: Material Partnership in Gospel Mission
Original: συνεργός
Category: Hospitality
3 John 1:8. Accurate but formal, somewhat dated-sounding Dutch compound; test for readability against the newspaper-feature reading-level target while preserving the partnership sense.
Support Receive
Approved rendering: ondersteunen
Transliteration: ondersteunen
Doctrine: Material Partnership in Gospel Mission
Rejected alternatives: ontvangen (bare, too weak — sounds like social welcome only)
Original: ὑπολαμβάνω
Category: Hospitality
3 John 1:8. Retains the material-support dimension of hypolambanō.
Send On Their Way
Approved rendering: uitgeleide doen / van het nodige voorzien
Transliteration: uitgeleide doen
Doctrine: Material Partnership in Gospel Mission
Original: προπέμπω
Category: Hospitality
3 John 1:6. No single Dutch word captures both the escort sense and the material-provisioning sense of propempō; use both phrases together, not interchangeably.
Worthily Of God
Approved rendering: God waardig
Transliteration: God waardig
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ἀξίως τοῦ θεοῦ
Category: Hospitality
3 John 1:6. Phrase so as not to sound like a performance-based merit test; frame as conduct reflecting God’s character, echoing the baseline’s grace-versus-merit caution.
Receive Welcome
Approved rendering: ontvangen
Transliteration: ontvangen
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Original: ἐπιδέχομαι
Category: Church Leadership
3 John 1:9,10. Retain the sense of formally accepting a person’s authority/message, not mere social politeness.
Wicked Words
Approved rendering: kwaadaardig
Transliteration: kwaadaardig
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: verkeerd, onaardig
Original: πονηρός
Category: Church Leadership
3 John 1:10. Preserves the active-malice nuance of ponēros describing Diotrephes’ speech against John’s party.
Imitate
Approved rendering: navolgen
Transliteration: navolgen
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Rejected alternatives: nadoen (too casual/flat for the positive command)
Original: μιμέομαι
Category: Ethics
3 John 1:11. Strongly positive-connoted Dutch devotional term (imitatio Christi tradition); the object of the verb (‘het goede’, never ‘het kwade’) must always be made explicit since the verse names a negative example (Diotrephes) to actively avoid.
Evil
Approved rendering: het kwade
Transliteration: het kwade
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Rejected alternatives: verkeerd (drains moral gravity)
Original: κακόν
Category: Ethics
3 John 1:11. Retains moral weight of kakon.
Good
Approved rendering: het goede
Transliteration: het goede
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Rejected alternatives: aardig (too weak, ‘nice’)
Original: ἀγαθόν
Category: Ethics
3 John 1:11. Retains moral weight of agathon.
One Who Does Good
Approved rendering: wie het goede doet
Transliteration: agathopoion
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: ἀγαθοποιῶν
Category: Ethics
3 John 1:11. Relative-clause rendering of the compound verb agathopoieō; preserves the habitual-character sense, not a single act.
One Who Does Evil
Approved rendering: wie het kwade doet
Transliteration: kakopoion
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: κακοποιῶν
Category: Ethics
3 John 1:11. Relative-clause rendering of the compound verb kakopoieō, for the same reason as ‘one_who_does_good’.
True Truthful
Approved rendering: waarachtig
Transliteration: waarachtig
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness (Demetrius)
Rejected alternatives: waar (bare factual sense, weaker personal-integrity nuance)
Original: ἀληθής
Category: Witness
3 John 1:12. Preferred over bare ‘waar’ for the personal-testimony trustworthiness context certifying the elder’s own reliability.
Face To Face
Approved rendering: van aangezicht tot aangezicht
Transliteration: stoma pros stoma
Doctrine: Personal Fellowship over Written Correspondence
Rejected alternatives: mond aan mond (literal calque — collides with ‘mond-op-mondbeademing’, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, in modern Dutch)
Original: στόμα πρὸς στόμα
Category: Fellowship
3 John 1:14. Idiomatic substitution mandatory over literal rendering per idiom-handling rule.
Friend
Approved rendering: vriend(en)
Transliteration: vriend
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: broeders (would flatten the deliberate register shift)
Original: φίλος
Category: Fellowship
3 John 1:14. Preserve the deliberate register shift from the earlier covenant-family term ‘broeders’ to the intimate personal term ‘vrienden’, echoing John 15:13-15.
Low Risk Terms
Beloved
Approved rendering: geliefde
Transliteration: geliefde
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: ἀγαπητός
Category: Fellowship
Stable, affectionate covenant-community term across all Dutch Bible traditions (3 John 1:1,2,5,11).
Joy
Approved rendering: vreugde
Transliteration: vreugde
Doctrine: Spiritual Fatherhood and Discipleship
Original: χαρά
Category: Faith
Stable, standard term (3 John 1:4); John’s pastoral joy over a disciple’s faithfulness.
Health
Approved rendering: gezond zijn
Transliteration: gezond zijn
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ὑγιαίνειν
Category: Hospitality
Ordinary bodily health (3 John 1:2), paired with but distinct from spiritual flourishing.
Peace
Approved rendering: vrede
Transliteration: vrede
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: εἰρήνη
Category: Fellowship
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE (exact match, unchanged). 3 John 1:14 standard closing epistolary peace-blessing; relational sense preserved.
Obligated Ought
Approved rendering: behoren / moeten
Transliteration: behoren
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ὀφείλομεν
Category: Hospitality
3 John 1:8. Standard Dutch duty-language framing hospitality as a binding obligation, not an optional kindness.
Remind
Approved rendering: herinneren (aan)
Transliteration: herinneren
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Original: ὑπομνήσω
Category: Church Leadership
3 John 1:10. Standard, no theological ambiguity.
Hinder
Approved rendering: verhinderen
Transliteration: verhinderen
Doctrine: Abuse of Ecclesial Power
Original: κωλύω
Category: Church Leadership
3 John 1:10. Standard and adequate for active obstruction.
Ink
Approved rendering: inkt
Transliteration: inkt
Doctrine: Personal Fellowship over Written Correspondence
Original: μέλαν
Category: Epistolary
3 John 1:13. Cultural-historical detail, no theological weight.
Reed Pen
Approved rendering: pen
Transliteration: pen
Doctrine: Personal Fellowship over Written Correspondence
Original: κάλαμος
Category: Epistolary
3 John 1:13. ‘Rietpen’ available for greater precision; no theological weight.
By Name
Approved rendering: bij naam
Transliteration: bij naam
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: ieder afzonderlijk
Original: κατ᾿ ὄνομα
Category: Fellowship
3 John 1:14. No significant risk; personal, individualized greeting.
Gaius
Approved rendering: Gajus
Transliteration: Gajus
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: Gaius (English-transliterated spelling)
Established Dutch Bible-name spelling (cf. HSV/NBV21). Use consistently for the letter’s recipient throughout all Phase 2 materials.
Diotrephes
Approved rendering: Diotrefes
Transliteration: Diotrefes
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: Diotrephes (English spelling)
Established Dutch Bible-name spelling (cf. HSV/NBV21).
Demetrius
Approved rendering: Demetrius
Transliteration: Demetrius
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness (Demetrius)
Identical spelling in Dutch and English Bible traditions; stable, no risk.
Referenced passages