Is Jesus the Only Begotten or the One and Only?

Some translations of the Bible use the phrases, "one and only" or "only", instead of "only begotten", when referring to Christ in John 1:14, 1:18, 3:16, 3:18, Hebrews 11:17, and 1 John 4:9.

What is the difference you may ask? It is simply this. Jesus is not the one and only Son of God. God has many sons. Jesus is the only one that is born of the actual seed of God. The other sons are either adopted or created. Angels were created. They are referred to as sons of God (Job 1:6 , Job 2:1 , Job 38:7) . Christians are the sons (children) of God by adoption. (Rom 8:15 , (Gal 4:4-5) . While God has many sons, he has only One Who was begotten of Him and is the Son of God by blood. So the modern translations are wrong when they call Jesus the One and Only Son of God. Jesus is the Only Begotten Son of God. This is not a matter of degrees but a complete change in the concept.

The whole point of such a monumental change to the scripture is to deny the deity of Christ. I do not accuse those translators of the new versions of deliberately making this change. I say it is because of the subtlety of Satan. These translators have bought into the false concepts expressed by modern textual criticism. The main false concept of the modern textual critic is to deny the providence of God in the preservation of His words down through the ages. They may maintain that the Word of God was inspired in the originals, but they deny He preserved His Words through the centuries since the originals were written. They claim that when copying the manuscripts, men made changes in order to justify their own ideas. While there are a few examples of such tampering, the vast majority of copies were accurately copied and are virtually in perfect agreement with each other. But the modern textual critic dismisses this idea of preservation and prefers to call those manuscripts that have actual evidence of tampering the "oldest and best" and thus claims that the corruptions in the text are truth.

A second concept is that it is acceptable, even desirable, that translators of the Bible use the equivalent method of translation instead of the literal method. In a literal translation, little license is available to inject one's own bias into the rendering. With the equivalence method, the translator is free to use an English equivalent of the literal Greek meaning. This method is ripe for corruption. It allows the translator's own biases to corrupt the translation. For example, a Spanish phrase might say, "El cielo está azul." The literal translation is, "the sky is blue". I could use an equivalent to translate this phrase. I could say, "the heavens above are an azure color." That expresses the thought but not the literal words. I could also say, "the atmosphere is nitrous, making it seem blue to the eye". The thought is similar but it is not literally what the Spanish says. In fact, that rendering, though similar, is not what the original says or even implies. But this is a legitimate example of an equivalent translation. The simple rendering, "the sky is blue" is the best. These are examples of exactly what happens in an equivalent translation of the Bible. (Before you get in an uproar, I realize there are equivalent renderings in the KJV, such as "*God Forbid", but the whole KJV is not an equivalent translation).

The amazing thing is that the thousands of agreeing Majority texts and the two disagreeing corrupt texts so loved by modern textual critics (א and B) agree here that the Greek word in question is monogenes (see below). Thus it is the translators that have mistranslated the Greek word into English. They have done this because they have bought into the modern notion that making an equivalent translation instead of a literal one is better. The subject of this treatise, the Only Begotten Son of God, is only one manifestation of the subtle changes made to the scriptures by modern textual criticism. There are literally hundreds of others.

Here is a partial list of those modern translations that mistranslate "only begotten":

New International Version (NIV)
New International Reader's Version (NIRV)
Revised Standard Version (RSV)
New Revised Standrd Version (NRSV)
Today's English Version (TEV)
The Living "Bible" (TLB)
New Living Translation (NLT)
New Life Version (NLV)
Bible in Basic English (BBE)
Contemporary English Version (CEV)
The Message (MSG)
Weymouth New Testament (WNT)
English Standard Version (ESV)
Worldwide English New Testament (WE)
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB).

When using the phrases, "one and only" or "only" instead of "only begotten", they render the Greek word monogene (μονογενη, John 3:16, Hebrews 11:17, 1 John 4:9), monogenes (μονογενης, John 1:18), or monogenous (μονογενους, John 1:14, 3:18), into English. All three spellings, monogene (μονογενη), monogenes (μονογενης), and monogenous (μονογενους), are variations of the same word, monogenes (μονογενης). Taking the word apart, we get monos and gene (genes, genous). Monos (μονος) means solely, single, only, etc. gene (genes, genous) is from the word genos (γενος), "to become offspring" or "to be born." Literally the word monogen(e,s,ous) means sole born, or only born. Only born or begotten is the only meaning we can arrive at from this word and its etymology.

How anyone could render the word monogenes as "one and only" is hard to understand (unless there is a hidden agenda involved).

*"God forbid" is a better rendering of me ginoito than "may it not be". The literal rendering is an emphatic "Absolutely Not!", not a wimpy "may it not be". "God Forbid" is closer to "Absolutely Not!" than to "may it not be".

שאלו שלום ירושלים
—Psalm 122:6(a) (Pray for the peace of Jerusalem) *

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." Psalm 119:105
"The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever." Psalm 12:6-7