Believe Into Jesus

By James Tarter

Lost in the translation: truly “believing in Jesus” moves us toward Him. The preposition in John’s Scriptures (eis) has a primary meaning of motion toward its object. In this little book we can see every Scripture where the Greek New Testament uses a “believe preposition Jesus” or “believe preposition God”. All of these verses together can provide a good Bible study because of their content and this book’s fresh perspective, but more valuable is letting you see for yourself how much content in John’s verses is lost by translations “believe in Jesus” or “believe on Jesus”. Translations like “believe toward Jesus” or “believe into Jesus” in specific “believe eis Jesus” verses in John can help believers realize that we need to keep growing into Christ Jesus after we first believe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716082306

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Believe Into Jesus

James Tarter

Copyright 2020, 2021 by James M. Tarter.  All rights reserved.  Permission granted to make copies for purposes consistent with furthering the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God.

Published by James M. Tarter

ISBN 978-1-716-08230-6

Fifth Edition

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE® (1995 Updated Edition): 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation.  Used by permission.  (www.Lockman.org)

I call the New American Standard Bible the NAS.  I add boldface, underlining, and capitals to specific words and phrases in Scriptures in order to add my emphasis for discussion.  I also occasionally call parts of verses a or b.

Quotes about Greek verb tenses and words in early Chapter 1, early Chapter 2, and the footnote at the end of Chapter 2 are taken from the Grammatical Notations or the New Testament Dictionary, both in The Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible, Spiros Zodhiates, AMG Publishers, 2008.  As with the NAS, I add underlining to identify key issues for this book.

Primary sources for all of the pisteuō’s and prepositions in the Greek texts:

The Interlinear NASB-NIV Parallel New Testament in Greek and English (Alfred Marshall) shows Nestle’s 21st Edition Greek text.

The New Analytical Greek Lexicon (Wesley J Perschbacher, Hendrickson Publishers, 1990, 2006) identifies Greek texts, cases, and other grammar.

The Exhaustive Concordance, New American Standard uses the 1977 NAS, which mostly uses Nestle’s 23rd Edition.

The Englishman’s Greek Concordance of the New Testament (George V. Wigram, 9th Edition, Hendrickson Publishers, 1999) lists all Greek pisteuō’s and prepositions in the KJV (King James Version) and has an English-Greek Index for all possible Greek "‘in’ or ‘on’ after pisteuō" in the KJV text.

The Word Study Concordance (Wigram and Winter, Tyndale House Publishers, 1978) provides the same Greek concordance and index but also an appendix for comparing variations in accepted Greek texts up to 1883 for each Greek word and verse.

Introduction: Believe Into Jesus, Moving Toward Him

Many believers have stated that in in believe in Jesus does not express the full meaning of the Greek preposition.  45 years ago Steve Heiks, a friend who did not claim to know much Greek, told me that the preposition in most Scriptures normally implied MOVING TOWARD the object of belief. Since then, many translations have come or were updated without including this insight.  This helped me think that this distinction somehow is not as clear or as important as I had thought.

Especially in the last 2 years, I also examined a few conjunctions and prepositions mostly in many Scriptures by John, who is the leading source of the phrase believe in Jesus.  I was put into a position to see that this distinction is far too important for us to ignore the true meaning of this phrase.  Believers and the Church have demonstrated a severely limited growth into Jesus, and understanding this phrase better could help many. We believers truly need to realize the added meaning to the usual translation of believe in [on] Jesus [Me, God…], and it helps to see how clearly and thoroughly Scriptures show its true meaning.

I shall state my main conclusion here and on occasions elsewhere: John predominantly used the preposition eis after pisteuō