Thanks for your suggestions.

I do not quite understand what you mean. I read "αλλα" to mean "every [one] who has been begotten out of God does not sin, but [instead of sinning], the [one] who was begotten out of God keeps himself." Is this not the apparent meaning if we accept "εαυτον" in the text? I think I saw "αλλα" many times with such usage..Iver Larsen wrote:Yes, there are other considerations apart from αὐτὸν. We have three clauses: (1) the one-being-in-the-state-of-having-been-born of God does not (habitually) sin, (2) the one-(once)-born of God continually-guards him(self??) and (3) the evil one does (can) not touch him.
You suggested a logical (because) connection between (1) and (2) and see them as parallel. This does not go well with the contrastive ἀλλά between (1) and (2).
The next sentence "we know that we are out of God and the whole world is laid in the evil [one]" also has a "και" separating a fact concerning the believer's relation to God and a fact concerning the evil one, just as "the [one] who was begotten out of God keeps himself" is concerning the believer's relation to God and "the evil [one] does not touch him" is concerning the evil one. Both your interpretation and mine have positive and negative aspects, and also the second sentence does not have the same pronoun used twice as direct objects, so I cannot see why the Byzantine textual variant is certainly incorrect.Iver Larsen wrote:On the other hand (2) and (3) are linked by καί, and say the same thing from a positive and negative aspect: Jesus guards him and Satan cannot touch him. The two pronouns have the same reference.
What about Jude 1:21? It also has what we are looking for: "εαυτους εν αγαπη θεου τηρησατε" = "keep yourselves in [the] love of God". So naturally I understand 1 John 5:18 to mean "... keeps himself [from sin]" based on the context, especially since 1 John 3:3 has "purify himself" which has similar meaning but does not occur even once anywhere else in John's writings.Iver Larsen wrote:Furthermore, the verb τηρέω is normally used by John to mean keep a commandment/word etc. The other sense of guarding someone or something to protect and preserve it is also fairly common, although not so common in John's writings. There is a similar usage of the verb in John 17:11-12:
Πάτερ ἅγιε, τήρησον αὐτοὺς ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί σου ᾧ δέδωκάς μοι, ἵνα ὦσιν ἓν καθὼς ἡμεῖς. ὅτε ἤμην μετ᾽ αὐτῶν ἐγὼ ἐτήρουν αὐτοὺς ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί σου
The only place in the NT where you have the sense of guarding oneself is in Jas 1:27:
ἄσπιλον ἑαυτὸν τηρεῖν ἀπὸ τοῦ κόσμου.
but here the sense is clarified both by "spotless" and "from the world". It seems a stretch to suggest that such words could be implied in 1 John 5:18. There is not enough contextual support to do so.
Regards,
David