tereo

The great intercessory prayer of John 17 is one of the great treasures in all of holy scripture. Dr. Hugh Nibley has given us a pearl of knowledge concerning a reinterpretation of John 17:11 when Christ prayed to the Father, going back to the Greek text in which this verse originally came to us:

As Jesus himself prayed on the eve of his crucifixion: “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24.) They are going back to that premortal glory. “And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may bein them, and I in them.” ( John 17:26.)

“Holy Father, keep [tereo] through thine own name those whom thou hast given me,” reads John 17:11 in the King James Version; but in the Greek text, there is no direct object “whom,” and the word tereo can mean to “test by observation or trial” ((Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, p. 1789)). Instead, we have an instrumental dative, so in the spirit of Article of Faith 8, this verse could read, “Holy Father, [test them on] thine own name [with which] thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are one.” This takes us back to the kapporet, for only the high priest knew the name which he whispered for admission through the temple veil on the Day of Atonement. ((Nibley, Hugh W. “The Atonement of Jesus Christ, Part 1”, Ensign, July 1990, 18))