834m3r, the King James Bible did not get it wrong. Jesus, in verse 3 is the person to mention being "born again."
Other than sparing KJV blushes, I really don’t see much reason to defend its reading here. I still recall my own blushes having to explain to work colleagues that by ‘born again’ I did NOT mean reincarnation. With a few more years under my belt I can understand their obvious misunderstanding. But to try to cover in that pitfall lest others stumble in, I’ll cover matters a little more.
Had Nicodemus simply misunderstood
that phrase, his blushes might have been spared, but Jesus had used another phrase—γεννηθη ανωθεν; to add reincarnation to it you’d get ‘born again’; to add OT to it you’d get ‘born a new way, from above’. Nicodemus added the wrong background, Egypt instead of Sinai. That is why Jesus expanded (5-7). On this dialogue, of more UpToDate versions we can see the RSV scoring A+, the CEB A, the NRSV A-; the NABRE B+; the EOB B; the NET B-; the ISV C; the NCB D+; the KJV U+; the CJB U- (so
https://archive.org/details/the-words-gone-global-exploring-bible-versions-2017-231024/mode/1up pp197-8).
But since some rubbish out of court and unheard—usually on third-party hearsay—these more recent versions, let me go back a few years. The C16 English Versions being uncharted in the book above, I’ve just now checked them on Jhn.3:3,4,7 for what I’ll call the ABC sequence of ambiguity (3), gaffe (4), disambiguation (7). For to see a little deeper, it really does help to see that it was only Nicodemus who played the
born-again line, and that it is not Jesus’ meaning.
From the C16 I’d say that Geneva/Bishops/Reims were rubbish, all flattening out the wordplay (BBB). Slightly better the KJV by not having Nicodemus use exactly the same expression (B∅B). The best of the rest were Tyndale/Coverdale/Matthew, since they limited the ‘born again’ to the chump Nicodemus, and fed him from the start the ambiguity of ‘born anew’ (ABA). The Great, though it limited the ‘born again’ to the chump Nicodemus, from the start fed him the answer of ‘born from above’ (CBC). I have at least shown that Bible translation offered varied, of which the C17 KJV was but one voice.
To test Nicodemus, Jesus served up a purposely ambiguous
born anew. Smiling, Nicodemus returned a ‘you cannot be serious’
born again, to which Jesus volleyed with
spiritual birth you ninny. Game, set, and match. All good fun of course, and Nicodemus would remain an honest spectator until Yeshua, overcoming Death, proved himself God’s champion. Something like this would serve: [Jesus] Only those who are born
anew can see God’s kingdom. [Nicodemus] How can an old person be
born [again]? Surely they can’t re-enter their mother’s womb and be born
a second time? [Jesus] …Don’t be surprised that I said to you, “You must be born
from above.”
In short,
A (3) must allow the misunderstanding
B (4) but pan out as
C (7) or revert to A (3).
Anōthen is from
anō, has the primary meaning of ‘above’ (Jhn.3:31; 8:23; Ac.2:19), but could double for beginning/source (Ac.26:3). It’s a little like just saying, “born another”, which might mean “born another
of the same kind, ie again”, or “born another
of a different kind, eg spiritually”. That John captured this range of meaning underlines how even the leading rabbinic lights were fuzzy as to biblical prophecies of spiritual birth being a special feature of the messianic age. So, the term ‘born again’—a second birth of the same kind—was friendly Nicodemean wit, but wasn’t what Jesus had said and failed the test.
This is a crucial text on spiritual life. Evangelicalism, from eu-angelion, means Good Newsism, and
Born Again is its defining term. For some it’s a holy cow, some fundamentally differentiating between
Christians, and
Born Again Christians. The Nicodemean bit (4) in itself requires but a small change in expression (7). That done, change should go deeper. Nicodemus was being primed that though he was in God’s earthly kingdom, by human birth (1 Chr.28:5; Ex.19:6), not even ethnic Jews could be in God’s messianic kingdom, except by spiritual birth consequent to the cross. That would be the only kingdom that spiritually mattered.
Incidentally, for 1 Pt.1:23, from Tyndale through Bishops, all had ‘born anew’, until the Roman Catholic Rheims, which was followed here by the KJV—another KJV blush.
