So, in the Gospel of John, chapter 3, Jesus is depicted as having a conversation with the Jewish aristocrat Nicodemus in which he says, “You must be born again.” The Greek word translated “again” actually has two meanings: it can mean “a second time” and it can mean “from above.” Whenever it is used elsewhere in John, it means “from above” (John 19:11, 23). This it seems is what Jesus intended in John 3 when he speaks with Nicodemus: “a person must be born from above in order to have eternal life in heaven above”. Nicodemus misunderstands, though, and thinks Jesus intends the other meaning of the word, that he has to be born a second time. “How can I crawl back into my mother’s womb?” he asks, out of frustration. Jesus corrects him: he is not talking about a second physical birth, but a heavenly birth, from above.

There is a problem however. This conversation with Nicodemus is dependent on the circumstance that a certain Greek word has two meanings (a double entendre). If we dispense with the double entendre, the conversation makes little sense. The problem is this: Jesus and Nicodemus in Jerusalem would not have been speaking Greek, but Aramaic. But the Aramaic word for “from above” does not also mean “second time.”

This double entendre works only in Greek. So we can surmise that this conversation could not have happened. Specifically not as described in the Gospel of John.

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