I’m a little hesitant to answer a question from someone who clearly knows more Greek than I do, but here I go;
I think that the translation ‘like’ is more acurate for καθώς. Context would help decide which word to use. (In John 17:2 ‘because’ makes more sense.)
I’m still more familiar with Koine than with “proper Greek”, so this sentence seems okay to me.
My dictionary says that ἵνα can;
(1) indicate purpose
(2) be as a substitute for the infinitive
(3) indicate result
(4) be a periphrasis for the imperative.
I think that here it might be #(2).
“Greater love than to lay down his life for his friends no one has.”
I would love to have someone else comment on this too.
μειζονα ταυτης αγαπην ουδεις εχει
ινα τις την ψυχην αυτου θηι υπερ των φιλων αυτου
“Greater love than to lay down his life for his friends no one has.”
I took ταυτης to be genitive comperationis, as it no one has greater love than this (love), because it’s gen. and femininum (belonging to love). In your translation it’s: no one has greater love than (and then basically the rest of the sentence as an object). After exei I would have expected a relative clause to define what exactly this love is … but instead it’s hina tis… tis and oudeis are both nominatives but as they mean the exact opposite I’m quite sure they don’t belong together , so tis must belong in a ‘hina clause’.
Thanks a lot for explaining hina, I think though (please correct me if you think I’m talking rubbish) that it’s hina of purpose here, but that it’s nearly impossible to translate that into English. I mean, this is one of the last things Jesus says to his disciples before the end.
But to make that purpose more obvious in English you need a relative clause or something else in English:
No one has greater love than this, who sets (lays down) his soul for his friends. Hope I’ve got it right now…
As the English translations often aren’t exact I took a look at the Latin one…
But in Latin it’s:
maiorem hac dilectionem nemo habet
ut animam suam quis ponat pro amicis suis
which confused me because hac (the Greek ταυτης ) is ablative Sg. fem. not genitive.
I’ve still not worked out why the Latin is ablative… but it makes me a bit uneasy about thinking that ταυτης is genitivus comarationis. I thought that Latin used the genitive for comparing things, although in IE it’s the ablative. I think I’ll just ignore the Latin …
The discrepancies between the greek, latin, and english can likely be explained by the manuscripts, depending on which you are using.
For a very literal translation, use the NA greek with New American Standard or Revised Standard english. Jerome was working off of a less accurate greek manuscript so there will automatically be some differences betwee what he had and what we now have, in addition to the double translation difficulties!
I don’t think that hina can be purpose in this case… it seems to me that the second clause is sort of in apposition to the object of the first-- ie:
no one has a greater love than this: that someone would lay down his life for his friends.
meizwn + gen. is very common.
the second half is in apposition to the “this”. does that make sense? (I don’t know if apposition is the correct term for this kind of construction, but that’s what it is in my mind!)
no one has a greater love than this: that someone would lay down his life for his friends.
Yes, this does seem better… so this means that basically you can translate hina to mean what every you want ? All these uses of hina are totally different to those it has in attic Greek…
Thanks a lot , but I’ll probably have nightmares for the next few days… hina conspiracy plots .
I agree that it is a genitive of comparison but I tried to force a translation using an infinitive.
I guess it could be done something like; “No one has greater love than this, the love to lay down his life for his friends”
? I know what it’s suppose to be, but hina tis (+ conj.) doesn’t sound very much like a relative clause to me.
, but I’ll probably have nightmares for the next few days… hina conspiracy plots 
.