There are many rooms in my Father’s house represents a more natural reordering in English of the Greek text, which reads literally “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.” The word translated rooms (Goodspeed, Phillips, Jerusalem Bible; “dwelling-places” New English Bible, New American Bible; “abodes” Moffatt) has occasioned some difficulty. The King James “mansions” comes originally from Tyndale’s translation, at which time the word “mansion” merely signified a dwelling, and not necessarily a large and luxurious one, as in contemporary English. Some commentators take the Greek word used here (monē) to mean “stopping place” or “resting place.” This theory suggests that heaven is a place of progression, with many resting places or stopping places along the way. It seems better, however, to seek the meaning of this word in another direction, interpreting it in light of the Greek verb (menō), meaning “to remain,” and so suggesting a permanent dwelling place. The verb “to remain” plays a significant role in John’s Gospel, and it is natural to see a connection between the noun monē and the verb menō, since both words come from the same stem. Moreover, the presupposition that it means a permanent dwelling place is supported by the indications in Jewish literature of a belief that heaven has many dwelling places. Finally, this same noun is used in verse 23 in the clause translated “My Father and I will come to him and live with him,” which more literally reads “We will come to him and make our home (monē) with him” (Revised Standard Version). Hence, the word is best taken in a generic sense, meaning “a place of dwelling”; since this dwelling is obviously one place within the whole (house), the most natural English equivalent is “room.”
My Father’s house is best taken as a phrase descriptive of heaven as a place having many rooms (that is, room enough for all).
I am going to prepare a place for you should be translated in a rather general manner. If it is related specifically to rooms, it will be possible to say “I’m going to prepare rooms for you” or “… get rooms ready for you” or “… fix up rooms for you.” At the same time, one would not wish to use a term which would suggest that the rooms were in need of repair and that Jesus had to fix them up to make them habitable.
In Greek if it were not so immediately precedes the clause translated I would not have told you by Good News Translation. Since Greek manuscripts have no punctuation, it is possible to take this clause either as a declaration (Good News Translation I would not have told you) or as a question (Revised Standard Version “would I have told you…?”), expecting the answer “No.” This of Good News Translation represents “that I go to prepare a place for you” (Revised Standard Version), which in Greek follows I would not have told you.
The clause I am going to prepare a place for you is immediately preceded by a conjunction in Greek (hoti) which may signal either direct discourse (“that”) or a casual relation “since.” In the Greek structure this preposition may be omitted as superfluous, if it is understood to mean “that,” and so it is not found in some manuscripts. If one follows as Jerusalem Bible: “if there were not, I should have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you.”
The UBS Committee on the Greek text decided in favor of the manuscripts that include “that” or “because” (hoti), assuming that its omission in some manuscripts may be explained as some scribe’s attempt to simplify the text by omitting a word which he considered unnecessary. The choice between the meaning of “that” or “because” is more difficult. Most translations obviously prefer to take the word in the sense of “that” (Revised Standard Version, for example). But the difficulty with this rendering is that, so far in discourse, Jesus has not told his disciples that he is going to prepare a place for them. If the solution of Good News Translation and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch is followed, this problem is overcome. By taking “that” as a means of introducing the content of what follows, and by referring the clause if it were not so both forward and backward, a meaning is arrived at that makes good sense, and is possible on the basis of the Greek text.
Many languages require an inversion of the conditional sentence to read “If this were not so, I would not have told you this.” However, there are special difficulties in some languages with a condition contrary to fact in the present time; in these languages it may be necessary to translate, for example, “If this was not the case (but it is), I would not tell you this (but I am telling you this).”
Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .