What Does John 20:6 Mean in the King James?
Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Peter enters a place whose Greek name means “memorial,” but what lies there is the burial linen without the body it was meant to recall.
THE MEANING
You can enter the place you expect to preserve the ending and find the linen still there while the body is absent. What remains marks that death was real, yet the burial wrapping no longer contains the one it wrapped.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The burial cloths are not proof that the buried one remains held by the grave.
THE ROOT
μνημεῖον
mnēmeion
GROWS FROM
μνημ-
mnēm-
memory, remembrance
“sepulchre” in this verse is mnēmeion. The Greek word for a tomb belongs to the language of remembering: it is a memorial place. Here, Peter sees the place of remembrance, but the linen remains without the one it was meant to mark.
ALSO GROWS
mnēmē: Memory or remembrance.
μνήμη
The sepulchre is named from this field of remembering, making the empty place itself part of what Peter sees.
mnēmoneuō: To remember or call something to mind.
μνημονεύω
The tomb holds a memory of the body’s burial, while the linen makes that burial visible in the present.
ὀθόνια
othonia
GROWS FROM
ὀθον-
othon-
linen cloth, linen sheet
“linen clothes” in this verse is othonia. The word names linen cloths, the material used to wrap the body for burial. The cloth remains as a trace of the burial, while its presence without the body shows that the wrapping no longer encloses him.
ALSO GROWS
othonē: A linen sheet or cloth.
ὀθόνη
This related word shows the linen belongs to a broader cloth vocabulary, not to ordinary clothing alone.
othonion: A linen cloth; the singular form related to the word used here.
ὀθόνιον
The same linen word appears in the burial account, connecting the cloth Peter sees with the wrapping laid around Jesus.
THE PATTERN
In the Gospel accounts, burial cloths show whether death still binds the body or the body has left its wrapping behind.
And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.THE THREAD
Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.This earlier verse uses the same Greek word for the linen clothes as John 20:6. The cloth Peter sees at the tomb is the very burial wrapping that had enclosed Jesus’ body.
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