This phrase occurs in the KJV New Testament 15 times:

  • Once in the Gospels (Luke 20:16);
  • Ten times in Romans (Rom 3:4,6,31; 6:2,15; 7:7,13; 9:14; 11:1,11); and
  • Four times in other letters from Paul (1 Cor 6:15; Gal 2:17; 3:21; 6:14).

In all these instances, there is no mention of God at all; nor is there even an implicit reference to God. The Greek phrase is "me genoito”. The first word is a negative and the second is a form of "ginomai", to become or to come into being. In effect, the phrase is a strongly worded "May it not be!" or "May it never be!"

R.E.O. White writes: "The solemn translators of the King James Authorized Version, with due episcopal decorum, rendered [this phrase] 'God forbid!' " (Interpreting the Bible, pp. 28,29).

Perhaps this unique translation was produced for what those 17th-century Church of England scholars considered decorum, but the result has been 400 years of confusion for ordinary readers. When the KJV is all that one reads, one may easily suppose that the Name of God is actually used in 15 New Testament passages where it does not appear in any form in the Greek manuscripts.

On the other hand, we are told that the translation of "God forbid" in Paul's letters can be traced back to William Tyndale, nearly a century before the KJV. Tyndale was certainly not a member of the upper echelon of the Church of England; in fact, some of them plotted to kill him. Evidently he was simply looking for a vigorous paraphrase that would be intelligible to ordinary English folk of his day.

In keeping with this point of view, other scholars have pointed out that "God forbid" was a common British expression of 16th and 17th century English (Dave Brunn, One Bible, Many Versions: Are All Translations Created Equal?, p. 50).

So the use of "God forbid" here has been offered as an example of the willingness of King James' men, when they felt it necessary and/or useful, to put aside their avowed allegiance to literality in favor of an equally important allegiance to helping their target audience understand the Bible (Leland Ryken, Choosing a Bible: Understanding English Bible Translation, pp. 74,75).

Then again, one might find fault with "God forbid!" on the grounds that it attributes to the apostle Paul a form of oath which he might not have literally used in Greek or any other language for that matter (cp. Matt 5:33-37)!

Modern versions translate "me genoito" by various expressions, usually with an exclamation point for emphasis, and all to the same effect: "By no means!" "Certainly not!" "Never!" "Not at all!" and "Absolutely not!" (See NRSV, NIV, NET and others).

As noted, the apostle Paul uses this phrase 14 out of the 15 times it occurs in the New Testament. "Me genoito" (not "God forbid!") seems to have been a favorite of his.

Picking up on this, Harry Whittaker has suggested (Enjoying the Bible, p. 227) that the one instance of "me genoito" in the Gospels makes it at least possible that, before his conversion, Paul was present at the time Jesus told his parable of the vineyard in Luke 20, and that the cry of absolute rejection for the lesson Jesus taught may have originated with the young Pharisee Saul:

When Jesus told the parable of the vineyard, with its climax: "He shall come and destroy these husbandmen, and shall give the vineyard to others" (Luke 20:16), he spoke a parable which was clearly understood by his adversaries — "they perceived that he had spoken this parable against them." Their reaction to it was the immediate cry "God forbid!" — literally, "May it not be!" The concordance quickly reveals that the other 14 occurrences of this expression all belong to the epistles of Paul. Then is it possible that Saul of Tarsus was one of the men who heard that parable spoken in the temple court?