W.E. Vines Expository Dictionary states that GINOSKO (1097) means, "to be taking in knowledge, to come to know, recognize, understand." Strong's also uses the word "in a great variety of applications with many implications", which, if you look this scripture up in the Amplified Bible will see that it renders it, "to know (to perceive, recognize, become acquainted with and understand.)
Vincent's Word Studies in the New Testament adds here: "Might recognize or perceive. This is striking, that eternal life consists in knowledge, or rather the pursuit of knowledge, since the present tense marks a continuance, a progressive perception of God in Christ."
Roberston's Word Pictures says of John 17:3, "Should know (gino¯sko¯sin). Present active subjunctive with hina (subject clause), 'should keep on knowing.'"
The Abingdon New Testament Commentaries writes: "For 1 John as well as the Fourth Gospel (John 17:3), the knowledge of 'the only true God' whom Jesus reveals gives eternal life."
Thayer's Lexicon says of GINWSKW: "to learn to know, to come to know, get a knowledge of"
Mounce's Basic's of Bible Greek says of GINWSKW: "come to know, realize, learn."
Also "eternal life is bound up with the knowledge of the Father, the only true God" [William Kelly Major Works Commentary]
Weymouth's The New Testament in Modern Speech adds in the footnote: "knowing]Or, as the tense implies, 'an ever-enlarging knowledge of.'"
"Faith involves knowledge. The Christian faith, therefore, does not contain an ounce of blind faith. The Bible teaches that in order to have real faith one must have true knowledge. [Systematic Theology Made Easy By C. Matthew McMahon]
"Knowledge of God is indispensable, self-knowledge is important, knowledge of others is desirable; to be too knowing in worldly matters is often accessory to sinful knowledge; the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ is a mean of escaping the pollutions which are in the world (John xvii, 3)." Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature By John McClintock [p. 136]
Henry Alford's The New Testament for English Readers ties 2 Peter 1:3 ["seeing that his divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that called us by his own glory and virtue"] with this footnote, "the knowledge of God is the beginning of life, John xvii. 3. Calvin)"
"'This is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ' (John xvii. 3). Through this knowledge believers escape the defilements of the world (2 Peter ii. 20), and all increase in grace is effected by a deeper knowledge. The Greek word is emphatic (epignosis) signifying “ a steady growth in knowledge, an advance step by step, not knowledge matured but ever maturing” (LUMBY). Peter uses this word four times in this Epistle (here, i. 3, 8; ii. 20)." The Lutheran Commentary edited by Henry Eyster Jacobs 1897
"Eternal life is the never-ending effort after this knowledge of God." The Epistles of St. John: The Greek Text By Brooke Foss Westcott [p.196] 1905
"The difference between oida and ginosko is worth considering a little further, as follows: Oida is immediate perception. Ginosko is gradual knowledge." The Knowledge of God, Its Meaning and Its Power By Alfred Taylor Schofield 1905
Raymond Brown in his Anchor Bible writes: "they know you. Although some witnesses have a future indicative, the best witnesses have a present subjunctive; this implies that the knowledge is a continuing action."
"And the eternal life is this: to obtain a knowledge of You the only true God, and the Messiah Whom You have sent." Ferrar Fenton's The Complete Bible in Modern English
It may be that the NWT translates this verse better than most other Bibles. The New World Translation also carefully notes the difference between gno'sis ("knowledge") and e·pi'gno·sis (translated "accurate knowledge")-a difference ignored by many others. (Philippians 1:9; 3:8)
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"'This is life eternal, that they might know Thee;' not the truth merely, not the gospel, but Thee. And this throws light upon the nature of the knowledge here spoken of —the nature of that intellectual element which we have shown to be an essential ingredient in personal Christianity. You will observe that eternal life is connected with the knowledge, the simple knowledge, of God and Christ. Now, are we not at first rather stumbled at this? We say, How can this be? Do we not find persons possessed of the knowledge of Christianity, who have no spiritual life in their souls? And how do we meet this apparent contradiction between Scripture and actual experience? We say, their knowledge cannot be of the right kind; it is not saving knowledge, it is not spiritual knowledge, and so on. And, therefore, with the view of correcting the text of Scripture, and preventing the abuse of it, we read it thus:— This is life eternal, that they might savingly, spiritually know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. But there are no such words as savingly and spiritually in the original, and surely if they had been necessary they would have been introduced. Our Saviour's words are simply, that they might know. Would it not be better, therefore, instead of almost always directing people's minds to the act itself of knowing, to direct them more frequently rather to the object—the Person to be known? This would determine the nature of the knowledge required, as well as call it into exercise. Scripture does not define, at least in any formal way, either faith or knowledge; and the explanation is this—it sets before us the proper objects of faith and knowledge, and trusts to their making, when realised, the right impression upon the mind. It does not tell you how to believe, or how to know. How could it? It could use no definition that would not leave the matter as great a mystery as before. Besides, this would have been drawing away our regards from the truth itself to the operations of our own minds. What, then, is the explanation of our now-a-days deeming it necessary to guard those simple words, faith and knowledge, from abuse, by qualifying them, and making additions to them? It is this: We have too much lost sight of their proper objects. We have overlooked too much this personal element. We have dealt too exclusively with abstract doctrines, which in their own nature cannot give birth to anything but purely abstract and dialectical states of mind; and so we need to draw distinctions, and to speak of saving and speculative faith, saving and speculative knowledge— distinctions which are quite unintelligible to those for whom they are designed, just because the spiritual character of those acts presupposes the spiritual character of their objects. It is life eternal to know THEE. Ah! there lies the secret of that knowledge which is eternal life. I must either know Him, or not know Him. There is no middle state of mind. If I have not the knowledge which is eternal life, it is not the true God and the true Christ that I have been contemplating, but a figment of my own imagination—an unsubstantial conception of my own mind. True, the knowledge of a divine and spiritual being must needs be a spiritual knowledge, the result of a spiritual influence upon the mind. But here, as in every other department, the nature of the knowledge depends primarily on the nature of the thing known; and we do think that by far the most effectual way of dealing with the unrenewed is, instead of telling them that they do not know aright and believe aright, to assure them that they do not believe and know the God and the Saviour of the Bible at all."~Christianity a Life: a sermon By Alexander L. R. Foote 1853
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