Core Glossary
Core Glossary — 3 John (English → Russian)
Curriculum: 3 John (single chapter, vv. 1–14 = entire book = core passage)
Governing authority: Baseline Romans Language Package for Russian (translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, doctrine_risk_registry.json). Terms marked “REUSED” below carry the baseline rendering forward unchanged, per hard-rule requirement. Terms marked “NEW” are introduced by this curriculum and proposed for addition to translation memory at the recorded risk tier.
Risk tier definitions: identical to baseline — Critical (human theologian review required, essential doctrine or live named controversy at stake), High (human theologian review required, significant confusion/sectarian-signal risk), Medium (native speaker review recommended), Low (automated review sufficient).
Glossary Table
| # | English term | Greek original | Transliteration | Russian rendering | Doctrine | Risk tier | Baseline status | Rationale / notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Elder | πρεσβύτερος | presbyteros | Старец | Church Leadership and Pride | Critical | NEW | Established Synodal rendering for 2–3 John, but collides with the live, named phenomenon of Russian Orthodox eldership culture (старчество) and its documented contemporary controversy (“младостарчество”), risking an inflated, mystical-authority reading of the author’s self-designation rather than a recognizable pastoral office. Must be explicitly defined on first use. |
| 2 | Beloved | ἀγαπητός | agapētos | возлюбленный | Truth and Christian Fellowship | Medium | NEW | Standard, but registerial risk of romantic-love drift; must retain familial/fraternal sense across all 4 occurrences (vv. 1, 2, 5, 11). |
| 3 | Truth | ἀλήθεια | alētheia | истина | Truth and Christian Fellowship | High | NEW | Established Synodal term, but Russian religious-philosophical tradition (Florensky et al.) tilts истина toward abstract metaphysical Truth; John’s relational/ethical sense (“walking in truth,” truth as active co-labor) must be anchored explicitly each occurrence (vv. 1, 3, 4, 8, 12). |
| 4 | Love | ἀγάπη | agapē | любовь | Truth and Christian Fellowship | Medium | NEW | Standard; risk that secular register defaults to romantic love; context must reinforce active, demonstrated, communal sense (v. 6). |
| 5 | To prosper / go well | εὐοδοῦσθαι | euodousthai | преуспевать | (general pastoral wellbeing) | Medium | NEW | Risk of prosperity-gospel misreading given translated Western Word-of-Faith materials circulating in some Russian evangelical/charismatic circles; must stay subordinate to soul/spiritual wellbeing (v. 2). |
| 6 | To be in health | ὑγιαίνειν | hygiainein | здравствовать | (general pastoral wellbeing) | Low | NEW | Standard greeting-formula term; asset via everyday cognate greeting “здравствуйте.” |
| 7 | Soul | ψυχή | psychē | душа | (general pastoral wellbeing) | Medium | NEW | Culturally loaded (“русская душа” trope); asset for intuitive spiritual resonance but risk of psychological/nationalist drift away from John’s specific spiritual-health sense (v. 2). |
| 8 | Joy / to rejoice | χαρά / ἐχάρην | chara / echarēn | радость / возрадоваться | Truth and Christian Fellowship | Low | NEW | Standard; unambiguous (vv. 3–4). |
| 9 | Testify / testimony | μαρτυρέω / μαρτυρία | martyreō / martyria | свидетельствовать / свидетельство | Commendation of Faithful Witness; Truth and Christian Fellowship | Medium | NEW | Forensic register is an asset for commendation weight, but the personification of “truth itself” testifying (v. 12) is easily lost if read only as ordinary human report. |
| 10 | To walk (conduct) | περιπατέω | peripateō | ходить (idiom: “ходить в истине”) | Truth and Christian Fellowship | Medium | NEW | Established idiom for manner of life; needs brief gloss for readers with low exposure to biblical idiom (vv. 3–4). |
| 11 | Children (spiritual) | τέκνα | tekna | дети | (pastoral fatherhood) | Low | NEW | Standard; minor clarification needed that these are spiritual, not biological, offspring (v. 4). |
| 12 | Faithful | πιστός | pistos | верный | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Medium | NEW | Shares root with baseline “faith” (вера, High risk); must not flatten into generic civic reliability, divorced from faith-rootedness (v. 5). |
| 13 | Brothers | ἀδελφοί | adelphoi | братья / братия | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers; Church Leadership and Pride | Low | NEW | Standard term of full spiritual kinship; functions inclusively though grammatically masculine (vv. 3, 5, 10). |
| 14 | Strangers | ξένοι | xenoi | странники | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Medium | NEW | Established Synodal rendering; странник evokes the revered Russian Orthodox pilgrim/wanderer figure (странничество) — partial asset for hospitality virtue, but risks recasting commissioned missionaries as generic ascetic wanderers; missionary-support dimension must be clarified (v. 5). |
| 15 | Church | ἐκκλησία | ekklēsia | церковь | Church Leadership and Pride; Truth and Christian Fellowship | High | REUSED FROM BASELINE (exact match) | Per baseline church entry and church_as_gods_people doctrine: overwhelmingly denotes the Russian Orthodox Church as institution/building in ordinary usage; the small, conflicted local congregation in 3 John must be explicitly framed against this default (vv. 6, 9, 10). |
| 16 | To send on one’s journey | προπέμπω | propempō | отпустить / провожать | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Medium | NEW | Technical missionary-support term (cf. Romans 15:24); risk of being read as mere passive permission to leave rather than active material provisioning (v. 6). |
| 17 | Worthy of God | ἀξίως τοῦ θεοῦ | axiōs tou theou | достойно Бога | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Low | NEW | Established Synodal phrase; standard of conduct measured by God’s character, not social custom (v. 6). |
| 18 | The Name | ὄνομα | onoma | имя (“ради имени Его”) | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Medium | NEW | Reverent shorthand for Christ; needs gloss on first use; minor risk of folk-magic “power of a name” association in Russian folk tradition (v. 7). |
| 19 | Gentiles / pagans | ἐθνικοί | ethnikoi | язычники | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Medium | REUSED FROM BASELINE (exact term) | Baseline term reused per rule, but sense here (general unbelieving outsiders from whom support is refused) differs from Romans’ mission-target sense (“the nations”); this contextual shift must be explicitly taught (v. 7). |
| 20 | To support / receive | ὑπολαμβάνω | hypolambanō | принимать / поддерживать | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers; Truth and Christian Fellowship | Medium | NEW | Risk of understating the material-support dimension in favor of a merely polite-reception reading; also shares a Russian verb root with ἐπιδέχομαι (below), flattening a distinction present in the Greek (v. 8). |
| 21 | Fellow worker | συνεργός | synergos | споспешник (archaic) / соработник, сотрудник (modern gloss) | Hospitality to Traveling Ministers; Truth and Christian Fellowship | Medium | NEW | Archaic Synodal term likely unfamiliar to secular/younger readers; modern gloss required to preserve the doctrinal point that hospitality is active gospel partnership (v. 8). |
| 22 | Loving to be first | φιλοπρωτεύων | philoprōteuōn | любящий первенствовать | Church Leadership and Pride | High | NEW | Unique NT compound (only occurrence in the NT). Risk that post-Soviet entrepreneurial culture positively valorizes personal ambition/leadership drive, blunting recognition of this as condemned, church-corrupting pride rather than admirable ambition (v. 9). |
| 23 | To receive / acknowledge | ἐπιδέχομαι | epidechomai | принимать (не принимает) | Church Leadership and Pride; Hospitality to Traveling Ministers | Medium | NEW | Same Russian root used for ὑπολαμβάνω (v. 8) and again here (vv. 9–10) for a related but distinct Greek verb; context, not lexical form, must carry the distinction between material support and acknowledgment of authority/welcome of a person. |
| 24 | To remind / expose | ὑπομνήσω | hypomnēsō | напомню (literal) / обличу (Synodal-tradition stronger sense) | Church Leadership and Pride | Medium | NEW | The gap between a mild “remind” and a stronger “expose/rebuke” affects the confrontational force of the passage; translators should verify exact print Synodal wording before finalizing renderings (v. 10). |
| 25 | To slander | καταλαλέω | katalaleō | клеветать / поносить (злыми словами) | Church Leadership and Pride | Medium | NEW | Standard defamation vocabulary; “wicked/false” (πονηροῖς) must not be softened to merely “unkind” (v. 10). |
| 26 | To forbid / hinder | κωλύω | kōlyō | запрещать | Church Leadership and Pride | Medium | NEW | Standard; theological point is that this is an illegitimate exercise of authority against faithful conduct, which context must make clear (v. 10). |
| 27 | To cast out / expel | ἐκβάλλω | ekballō | изгонять | Church Leadership and Pride | Medium-High | NEW | ”Cast out of the church” risks being read through the weighty canonical category of formal Orthodox excommunication/anathema, overstating institutional formality of one leader’s unilateral abusive act; must be framed precisely (v. 10). |
| 28 | To imitate | μιμέομαι | mimeomai | подражать | Imitating Good rather than Evil | Low | NEW | Standard, doctrinally clear (v. 11). |
| 29 | Evil / to do evil | κακόν / κακοποιέω | kakon / kakopoieō | зло / делать зло | Imitating Good rather than Evil | Low | NEW | Standard moral vocabulary (v. 11). |
| 30 | Good / to do good | ἀγαθόν / ἀγαθοποιέω | agathon / agathopoieō | добро / делать добро | Imitating Good rather than Evil | Low | NEW | Standard; note ordering — good works evidence, not earn, standing with God, consistent with baseline sanctification/justification framing (v. 11). |
| 31 | To see God | ὁράω τὸν θεόν | horaō ton theon | видеть Бога (не видел Бога) | Imitating Good rather than Evil | Low-Medium | NEW | Johannine idiom for relational knowledge of God, not literal sight (cf. 1 John 3:6, 4:20); needs brief gloss (v. 11). |
| 32 | Peace | εἰρήνη | eirēnē | мир | Truth and Christian Fellowship (closing) | Medium | REUSED FROM BASELINE (exact term) | Per baseline peace entry: also means “the world” / carries 20th-century political-peace connotations; here functions as a simple epistolary blessing, not a developed doctrinal argument (v. 14). |
| 33 | Friend | φίλος | philos | друг / друзья | (closing relational note) | Low-Medium | NEW | Distinct from ἀδελφός (“brother”); marks a deliberate, warm shift in the letter’s closing relational vocabulary; not a technical doctrinal category (v. 14). |
| 34 | ”Mouth to mouth” (idiom for face-to-face) | στόμα πρὸς στόμα | stoma pros stoma | уста к устам | Truth and Christian Fellowship (closing) | High | NEW | Elevated register word уста (not the ordinary рот) MUST be retained; substituting рот collides with the modern Russian idiom for CPR/mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (“рот в рот”), producing an absurd unintended image (v. 14). |
| 35 | Ink and pen (reed) | μέλαν καὶ κάλαμος | melan kai kalamos | чернила и трость | (epistolary closing) | Low | NEW | Standard Synodal rendering; трость (reed pen) may need a brief modern gloss, since its dominant modern sense is “cane/walking stick” (v. 13). |
Summary Statistics
| Risk tier | Count | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 1 | Elder (Старец) |
| High | 4 | Truth (истина), Church (церковь) [reused], Loving to be first (любящий первенствовать), “Mouth to mouth” idiom (уста к устам) |
| Medium-High | 1 | To cast out / expel (изгонять) |
| Medium | 18 | Beloved, Love, To prosper, Soul, Testify/testimony, To walk, Faithful, Strangers, To send on one’s journey, The Name, Gentiles/pagans [reused], To support/receive, Fellow worker, To receive/acknowledge, To remind/expose, To slander, To forbid/hinder, Peace [reused] |
| Low / Low-Medium | 11 | To be in health, Joy/rejoice, Children, Brothers, Worthy of God, To imitate, Evil/do evil, Good/do good, To see God, Friend, Ink and pen |
| Total terms cataloged | 35 | — |
Reused from Romans baseline (exact rendering required, no deviation permitted): церковь (church), язычники (gentiles), мир (peace).
New terms proposed for addition to translation memory, pending Phase 1 Step 8 (Core Glossary) sign-off and Phase 2 theologian review for all Critical/High entries: Старец (elder), истина (truth), любящий первенствовать (loving to be first), уста к устам (mouth to mouth / face to face), and all remaining Medium/Low entries listed above.
This glossary extends the baseline Romans Language Package for Russian. All reused terms must not deviate from their baseline rendering. All new terms follow the same Critical/High/Medium/Low risk framework, review routing conventions, and Synodal-register citation standard established in the baseline doctrine_risk_registry.json and 12_ai_translation_requirements.md.
See analysis/07_semantic_analysis.md for full verse-by-verse contextual argumentation supporting each entry.
Critical Risk Terms
Elder
Approved rendering: Старец
Transliteration: Starets
Doctrine: Apostolic/Pastoral Authority of the Elder
Rejected alternatives: старейшина (too generic/secular, loses recognized-office sense), пресвитер (technically correct but registerially too clerical/institutional for this personal letter’s opening)
Original: πρεσβύτερος
Category: Church Leadership
CRITICAL. Established Synodal rendering for 2-3 John’s self-designation, but collides with the live, named Russian Orthodox institution of eldership (старчество) — the revered, often monastic office of charismatic spiritual fatherhood (the historical Optina elders; Dostoevsky’s Elder Zosima) — and with the documented contemporary controversy of младостарчество (younger clergy improperly claiming elder-like authority), addressed in official Russian Orthodox synodal statements. MUST be explicitly glossed on first use as a recognized pastoral/apostolic-era office of accountable authority, not a claim to монашеский mystical eldership. This is the letter’s single highest-risk term.
High Risk Terms
Church
Approved rendering: церковь
Transliteration: tserkov’
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: храм, собрание (acceptable only as clarifying synonym, per baseline)
Original: ἐκκλησία
Category: Church
Inherited from Romans package (exact rendering, no deviation permitted). In 3 John the referent (vv. 6, 9, 10) is unmistakably a single small, conflicted local congregation of the sort many Evangelical/Protestant minority churches in Russia resemble — the contrast with церковь’s default ordinary-usage referent (the Russian Orthodox Church as institution or building) must be made explicit in teaching material, exactly as in the Romans baseline’s church_as_gods_people doctrine entry.
Faith
Approved rendering: вера
Transliteration: vera
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: доверие, убеждение
Inherited from Romans package (exact term). Not directly translated as a noun in 3 John, but πιστός (‘faithful’, v. 5, rendered верный) shares its root with πίστις/вера; teaching material should note this shared root so Gaius’s hospitality is understood as an act flowing from genuine faith, not generic civic reliability, consistent with the baseline’s High-risk framing of вера as personal, Christ-directed trust rather than institutional religious identity.
Truth
Approved rendering: истина
Transliteration: istina
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: правда (competing near-synonym, moral/justice-and-political register; must never be blended with or substituted for истина in this letter)
Original: ἀλήθεια
Category: Truth
Occurs at vv. 1, 3, 4, 8, 12. Russian religious-philosophical tradition (Florensky’s Столп и утверждение Истины, and the broader Solovyov/Berdyaev strand) elevates истина toward abstract, near-mystical metaphysical Truth, risking drift away from John’s relational, ethical, active sense (walking in truth, being a fellow worker for the truth, truth itself testifying). Must be anchored to observable conduct and gospel content at every occurrence.
Loving To Be First
Approved rendering: любящий первенствовать
Transliteration: lyubyashchiy pervenstvovat’
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: властолюбивый (imports political-tyranny connotation rather than church-status ambition), амбициозный (positively-loaded in post-Soviet business culture — would neutralize, not condemn, the vice)
Original: φιλοπρωτεύων
Category: Church Leadership
V. 9. Unique NT compound (φιλοπρωτεύων), only occurrence in the New Testament. No natural Russian idiom exists; this constructed calque is the best available option but risks being read through the positively-valorized post-Soviet entrepreneurial/leadership-culture lens (лидерство, целеустремлённость) rather than as condemned, church-corrupting pride. MUST be explicitly framed in teaching text as destructive sin judged by its fruit (v. 10), never as admirable ambition.
Cast Out
Approved rendering: изгонять
Transliteration: izgonyat’
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: отлучать (too formally canonical, implies conciliar excommunication process entirely absent from Diotrephes’ unilateral act), анафематствовать (NEVER use — implies formal anathema)
Original: ἐκβάλλω
Category: Church Leadership
V. 10. ‘Cast out of the church’ risks being read through the weighty canonical category of formal Russian Orthodox excommunication/anathema (отлучение от церкви, анафема), overstating the institutional formality of one abusive individual’s unilateral action. Frame explicitly as illegitimate, personally-motivated exclusion, not a canonically regular process.
Mouth To Mouth
Approved rendering: уста к устам
Transliteration: usta k ustam
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: рот к роту / рот в рот (NEVER use — collides catastrophically with the modern Russian idiom for CPR/mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, ‘дыхание рот в рот’)
Original: στόμα πρὸς στόμα
Category: Fellowship
V. 14. The elevated-register word уста (not the ordinary рот) MUST be retained. Ranked high not for doctrinal weight but for severity of failure mode: the wrong lexical choice produces an absurd, unintended image at the letter’s warm, personal close.
Medium Risk Terms
Gentiles
Approved rendering: язычники
Transliteration: yazychniki
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: иноземцы, неверующие (too generic, loses the term’s established Synodal identity)
Original: ἐθνικοί
Category: Missions
Inherited from Romans package (exact term, no deviation permitted). CONTEXTUAL SENSE SHIFT REQUIRED: in 3 John 1:7 (ἐθνικοί) the sense is general unbelieving outsiders from whom the missionaries deliberately refuse support, distinct from Romans’ mission-target sense (‘the nations’ to be reached). Because translation memory enforces the identical Russian word across documents, teaching material accompanying 3 John MUST explain this contextual difference explicitly so students moving between curricula do not import the Romans mission-scope sense into this verse.
Peace
Approved rendering: мир
Transliteration: mir
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: покой, спокойствие
Original: εἰρήνη
Category: Salvation
Inherited from Romans package (exact term, no deviation permitted). In 3 John 1:14, мир functions as a simple, warm epistolary-blessing closing formula, not a developed forensic argument; keep it simple and warm rather than over-theologizing it into Romans 5:1’s ‘peace with God through justification’ exposition, which belongs to that curriculum specifically.
God
Approved rendering: Бог
Transliteration: Bog
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Rejected alternatives: Всевышний (acceptable poetic synonym only, per baseline)
Inherited from Romans package (exact term). In 3 John 1:11 (‘is from God’ / ‘has not seen God’), keep the referent vivid, personal, and relational, consistent with baseline usage; do not let decades of secular idiomatic flattening (‘слава Богу’ emptied of referent) weaken the force of this evidentiary claim about relationship with a personal God.
Mission
Approved rendering: миссия / благовестие
Transliteration: missiya / blagovestiye
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: пропаганда (never use, per baseline)
Inherited from Romans package (exact term). Relevant here because the ‘brothers’/‘strangers’ Gaius supports (vv. 5-8) are traveling gospel workers engaged in exactly this missiya/blagovestiye activity; благовестие remains preferable to миссионерство in contexts sensitive to post-Soviet suspicion of foreign-funded missionary activity, per baseline notes.
Beloved
Approved rendering: возлюбленный
Transliteration: vozlyublennyy
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: дорогой (too casual/secular), любимый (romantic-register drift)
Original: ἀγαπητός
Category: Fellowship
Structural refrain occurring 4 times (vv. 1, 2, 5, 11). Must retain its fraternal/familial agape sense across every occurrence; first use should state plainly this is family-of-faith affection, not romantic address.
Love
Approved rendering: любовь
Transliteration: lyubov’
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: симпатия (too weak)
Original: ἀγάπη
Category: Fellowship
V. 6: Gaius’s love is reported, verifiable, demonstrated action (hospitality), not sentiment. Secular register defaults to romantic love; context must reinforce the active, communal sense each time.
Prosper
Approved rendering: преуспевать
Transliteration: preuspevat’
Doctrine: Spiritual Fatherhood and Pastoral Care
Rejected alternatives: процветать (too commercial/business register)
Original: εὐοδοῦσθαι
Category: Pastoral Care
V. 2. Risk of prosperity-gospel misreading given translated Western Word of Faith materials circulating in some Russian evangelical/charismatic circles; must be kept explicitly subordinate to soul-health (‘как преуспевает душа твоя’) in the same verse, never presented as a stand-alone material-blessing claim.
Soul
Approved rendering: душа
Transliteration: dusha
Doctrine: Spiritual Fatherhood and Pastoral Care
Rejected alternatives: психика (clinical/secular register, loses spiritual referent)
Original: ψυχή
Category: Anthropology
V. 2. Culturally loaded via the ‘русская душа’ (Russian soul) national-character trope in literature and folk identity; an asset for intuitive spiritual resonance, but risks psychological or nationalist-poetic drift away from John’s specific referent — Gaius’s personal spiritual health before God.
Testify
Approved rendering: свидетельствовать / свидетельство
Transliteration: svidetel’stvovat’ / svidetel’stvo
Doctrine: Commendation of Faithful Witness (Demetrius)
Rejected alternatives: подтверждать (too weak, loses forensic and personified weight)
Original: μαρτυρέω / μαρτυρία
Category: Witness
Recurs at vv. 3, 6, and climactically 12. Forensic/legal register (свидетель = courtroom witness) is an asset for commendation weight, but the personification of ‘the truth itself’ testifying at v. 12 is easily flattened into ordinary human report if not surfaced explicitly in teaching material.
Walk
Approved rendering: ходить (idiom: ходить в истине)
Transliteration: khodit’ (v istine)
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: жить (loses the specific biblical idiom’s manner-of-life force)
Original: περιπατέω
Category: Ethics
Vv. 3-4. Established Synodal idiom for one’s whole manner of life; needs a brief gloss on first use for secular readers with low exposure to biblical idiom, who may hear only literal ambulation.
Faithful
Approved rendering: верный
Transliteration: vernyy
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: надёжный (generic civic reliability, loses faith-rootedness)
Original: πιστός
Category: Faith
V. 5. Shares its root with вера (faith, baseline High risk); must not flatten into merely dutiful/dependable in a generic civic-virtue sense divorced from faith.
Strangers
Approved rendering: странники
Transliteration: stranniki
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: чужие (too impersonal, faint hostile connotation), иностранцы (too narrowly nationality-based)
Original: ξένοι
Category: Hospitality
V. 5. Established Synodal rendering, but странник strongly evokes the revered Russian Orthodox wandering-pilgrim tradition (странничество; cf. Tolstoy, Leskov). Partial asset for the hospitality virtue, but risks recasting commissioned gospel workers as generic ascetic wanderers rather than missionaries dependent on material church support; must be glossed on first use.
Send On Journey
Approved rendering: отпустить / провожать
Transliteration: otpustit’ / provozhat’
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: отпустить alone, unglossed (too passive, loses provisioning sense)
Original: προπέμπω
Category: Hospitality
V. 6. Technical missionary-support term (cf. Romans 15:24 in baseline); отпустить alone risks being read as mere passive permission to depart rather than active material/logistical provisioning for continued gospel work, which must be glossed explicitly.
The Name
Approved rendering: имя (ради имени Его)
Transliteration: imya (radi imeni Ego)
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ὄνομα
Category: Christology
V. 7. Reverent shorthand for Christ and his mission/authority; needs a brief gloss on first use, and must be kept clear of Russian folk-magic ‘power of a name’ associations (заговоры, incantations).
Support Receive
Approved rendering: принимать / поддерживать
Transliteration: prinimat’ / podderzhivat’
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: радушно встречать (too limited to polite greeting, loses ongoing material support)
Original: ὑπολαμβάνω
Category: Hospitality
V. 8. принимать defaults in ordinary Russian to courteous social reception; must be explicitly unpacked as ongoing practical material provision, the verse’s actual point. Shares its Russian verb root with epidechomai below (vv. 9-10) for a distinct Greek verb — context, not lexical form, carries the distinction.
Fellow Worker
Approved rendering: споспешник (archaic Synodal) / соработник, сотрудник (modern gloss)
Transliteration: spospeshnik / sorabotnik, sotrudnik
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Rejected alternatives: помощник (too weak, implies subordinate assistant rather than co-laboring partner)
Original: συνεργός
Category: Hospitality
V. 8. Archaic Synodal term likely unfamiliar to secular/younger readers; pair with a modern gloss on first use to preserve the doctrinal point that hospitality is active gospel partnership, not passive kindness.
Receive Acknowledge
Approved rendering: принимать (не принимает)
Transliteration: prinimat’ (ne prinimayet)
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Original: ἐπιδέχομαι
Category: Church Leadership
Vv. 9-10. Shares the same Russian verb root as support_receive (v. 8) for a distinct Greek verb (ἐπιδέχομαι); Diotrephes’ refusal is rejection of legitimate pastoral authority, not mere inhospitality. Context must carry this distinction since the lexical form does not.
Remind Expose
Approved rendering: напомню (literal) / обличу (Synodal-tradition stronger sense)
Transliteration: napomnyu / oblichu
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: упрекнуть (too mild, understates formal church-discipline confrontation)
Original: ὑπομνήσω
Category: Church Leadership
V. 10. The gap between a mild ‘I will remind him’ and a stronger ‘I will expose/rebuke him’ affects how confrontational the Elder’s promised in-person action reads. Verify exact print Synodal wording before finalizing Phase 2 renderings; do not default to the weaker gloss.
Slander
Approved rendering: клеветать / поносить (злыми словами)
Transliteration: klevetat’ / ponosit’ (zlymi slovami)
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Rejected alternatives: сплетничать (too casual, loses malicious/damaging intent)
Original: καταλαλέω
Category: Church Leadership
V. 10. Standard defamation vocabulary; ensure ‘wicked/false’ (πονηροῖς) is not softened into merely ‘unkind’ — this is deliberate, damaging falsehood used as a tool of institutional control.
Forbid Hinder
Approved rendering: запрещать
Transliteration: zapreshchat’
Doctrine: Church Leadership and Pride (Diotrephes)
Original: κωλύω
Category: Church Leadership
V. 10. Context must reinforce that this is an illegitimate exercise of church authority against faithful conduct, not a legitimate pastoral restriction.
See God
Approved rendering: видеть Бога (не видел Бога)
Transliteration: videt’ Boga (ne videl Boga)
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: ὁράω τὸν θεόν
Category: God
V. 11. Johannine idiom (cf. 1 John 3:6, 4:20) for genuine relational knowledge of God, not literal sight; gloss briefly so it is not misread as a claim about future beatific vision, nor drawn toward mystical-experiential старчество/hesychast categories of advanced spiritual attainment.
Low Risk Terms
Fellowship
Approved rendering: общение
Transliteration: obshcheniye
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: дружба, коллектив (avoid Soviet-collective connotation, per baseline)
Inherited from Romans package (exact term). The specific Greek lexeme κοινωνία does not occur in 3 John’s text, but the curriculum doctrine ‘Truth and Christian Fellowship’ draws directly on this baseline concept for expository/teaching-text use; retain общение for any such exposition rather than coining an alternative.
Health
Approved rendering: здравствовать
Transliteration: zdravstvovat’
Doctrine: Spiritual Fatherhood and Pastoral Care
Original: ὑγιαίνειν
Category: Pastoral Care
V. 2. Standard greeting-formula term; shares a root with the everyday greeting ‘здравствуйте’, an intelligibility asset.
Joy
Approved rendering: радость / возрадоваться
Transliteration: radost’ / vozradovat’sya
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: χαρά / ἐχάρην
Category: Fellowship
Vv. 3-4. Standard, unambiguous relational-pastoral gladness at another’s persevering faithfulness.
Children
Approved rendering: дети
Transliteration: deti
Doctrine: Spiritual Fatherhood and Pastoral Care
Original: τέκνα
Category: Pastoral Care
V. 4. Spiritual, not biological, offspring under the Elder’s pastoral care; flag clearly given the letter’s personal register.
Brothers
Approved rendering: братья / братия
Transliteration: brat’ya / bratiya
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ἀδελφοί
Category: Fellowship
Vv. 3, 5, 10. Full spiritual kinship term for fellow believers regardless of biological relation; functions inclusively though grammatically masculine — clarify per standard Russian usage.
Worthy Of God
Approved rendering: достойно Бога
Transliteration: dostoyno Boga
Doctrine: Hospitality to Traveling Ministers
Original: ἀξίως τοῦ θεοῦ
Category: Ethics
V. 6. Established Synodal phrase; standard of conduct measured by God’s character, not social custom.
Imitate
Approved rendering: подражать
Transliteration: podrazhat’
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: μιμέομαι
Category: Ethics
V. 11. Standard, well established, doctrinally clear.
Evil
Approved rendering: зло / делать зло
Transliteration: zlo / delat’ zlo
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: κακόν / κακοποιέω
Category: Ethics
V. 11. Standard moral vocabulary, doctrinally clear.
Good
Approved rendering: добро / делать добро
Transliteration: dobro / delat’ dobro
Doctrine: Imitating Good rather than Evil
Original: ἀγαθόν / ἀγαθοποιέω
Category: Ethics
V. 11. ‘Is from God’ describes evidentiary fruit of a God-given nature, not a means of earning divine favor — make this ordering explicit, consistent with the baseline’s justification/sanctification framing.
Friend
Approved rendering: друг / друзья
Transliteration: drug / druz’ya
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Original: φίλος
Category: Fellowship
V. 14. Distinct from ἀδελφός (‘brother’) and ἀγαπητός (‘beloved’); marks a deliberate, warm shift in the letter’s closing relational vocabulary — a literary/relational nuance, not a technical doctrinal category.
Ink And Pen
Approved rendering: чернила и трость
Transliteration: chernila i trost’
Doctrine: Truth and Christian Fellowship
Rejected alternatives: перо alone (too generic, loses historical/textual color)
Original: μέλαν καὶ κάλαμος
Category: Epistolary
V. 13. Established Synodal rendering; трость (reed pen) may need a brief modern gloss (‘тростниковое перо’), since its dominant modern sense is ‘cane/walking stick’.
Referenced passages