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John 1:9

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New Testament • John 1:9

[John 1:9] ην το φως το αληθινον ο φωτιζει παντα ανθρωπον ερχομενον εις τον κοσμον

I’ve always thought that there were only two possibilities:
(1) “το φως το αληθινον ο …” is the subject of the periphrastic “ην ερχομενον …”; “the true light which illuminates every man was coming into the world”
(2) “ερχομενον εις τον κοσμον” adjectivally modifies “παντα ανθρωπον”, and “το φως το αληθινον” is subject of “ην” with predicate as the indefinite relative “ο φωτιζει παντα ανθρωπον”; “the true light was that which illuminates every man who comes into the world”
And I previously thought that (1) was more likely given how it would flow naturally into the next sentence, although (2) could be arguable given John’s liking for using similar words in different places in close proximity with different meanings.

But I happened to look at that verse again today and thought of a third possibility:
(3) “το φως το αληθινον” is subject of “ην” with predicate as the indefinite relative “ο φωτιζει παντα ανθρωπον”, and “ερχομενον εις τον κοσμον” is a circumstantial adverbial modifying “φωτιζει”; “the true light was that which, coming into the world, illuminates every man”

On thinking of that it seemed similar to other occasions of such present tense circumstantial adverbials in John’s writing such as 1:48 (“οντα υπο την συκην ειδον σε”), 4:9 (“πως συ ιουδαιος ων παρ εμου πειν αιτεις γυναικος σαμαριτιδος ουσης”).

So which do you all think is the most likely, if we make the assumption that John isn’t intentionally trying to make an ambiguous sentence? I’m thinking (3) now.

My search turned up only two results:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=1461, which didn’t clearly identify the grammatical structure, and where there wasn’t really a clear consensus
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-arch … 23803.html, where Carl concluded on (1) but didn’t mention (3). Any comments, Carl? :)

Statistics: Posted by David Lim — June 25th, 2014, 1:12 am

John 6:29

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New Testament • Re: John 6:29: ἱνα without any nuance of “purposed result”?
moon jung wrote:
But as long as we assume that the ἱνα clause represents a desirable state of affairs in general,
my rendering can be obtained.

At the expense of the context, as I’ve already explained. I hope you seriously reconsider why you are pushing your opinions on “ινα” so strongly, because if we disregard context, we can always argue for anything we like and find excuses for everything that doesn’t quite fit. No doubt, the context has to be interpreted, so again you are free to disregard everyone’s interpretation except those whom you agree with.

moon jung wrote:
My understanding seems to be consistent with the observation of Sim’s dissertation: […]

You can choose whatever you like, but I feel that you are just trying to get someone to agree with you, and at the same time you seem to also let your opinions drive your linguistic claims. For example, you keep trying to use what others say in order to prove your original claims, and you press people in that direction as far as you can. Thus I urge you to instead start learning Greek simply as a language rather than as a tool to be wielded. And it would be good for you to be aware of confirmation bias. No one is immune to it, so the best we can do is to provide objective evidence. For a natural language, it seems that only statistical evidence (with a sufficiently large sample size) is objective enough, as other types of evidence all turn upon interpretation, hence the multitude of opinions based on them. You will have to decide for yourself what you consider as sufficient evidence, but don’t expect me to agree with you if you do not provide corpus-based evidence but only your opinions concerning solitary instances.

Statistics: Posted by David Lim — July 13th, 2014, 10:47 pm

1 Corinthians 4:8

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New Testament • Re: Can statements in 1 Corinthians 4:8 be rhetorical questi
David Lee wrote:
The author (both human and divine) would write in a way that the epistle could be understood by most readers, especially if it was meant to be passed around and read in different churches. I think languages have enough nuance that by using certain vocabulary, word order, and word patterns, a fluent immersed reader would be clear on what the epistle is saying, at least semantically.

The first statement of yours is an assumption, which may not be so easy to justify as you might have assumed. Your second statement is reasonable, but what if a rhetorical question and a rhetorical statement have almost exactly the same semantic meaning? Then there would be no need for the reader to attempt to distinguish between the two. Even in English not everything is a statement or a question… We see people using “…?”, “?!”, “!?!?” and so on, which seems to suggest that some exclamations are ‘in-between’…

Statistics: Posted by David Lim — May 16th, 2014, 5:18 am

John 1:16

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New Testament • Re: John 1:16: how to understand the ὁτι?
Jonathan Robie wrote:
The SBLGNT punctuation uses parentheses around verse 15:

14 Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας· 15 (Ἰωάννης μαρτυρεῖ περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ κέκραγεν λέγων· Οὗτος ἦν ὃν εἶπον· Ὁ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος ἔμπροσθέν μου γέγονεν, ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν·) 16 ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἐλάβομεν, καὶ χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος· 17 ὅτι ὁ νόμος διὰ Μωϋσέως ἐδόθη, ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐγένετο.

This implies that the ὅτι in verse 16 continues from the last clause of verse 14:

πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας … ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἐλάβομεν

Makes sense to me …

Wow! It makes sense. The fact that the witness of the Baptist begins from John 1:19 makes it reasonable
to think that the statement in John 1:15 about the Baptist is parenthetical. The only problem seems whether
such a parenthetical insertion without any discourse particle (e.g. δε ) is an established method of narration.

Moon Jung

Statistics: Posted by moon jung — July 12th, 2014, 10:19 pm

1 Corinthians 7:36

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New Testament • Re: 1 Cor 7:36 καὶ οὕτως ὀφείλει γίνεσθαι

I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but my questions about this clause are not really about its pragmatics but just the low-level stuff of figuring out subjects, antecedents, referents, etc.

Statistics: Posted by Stephen Carlson — December 27th, 2016, 8:58 am

1 Peter 4:3

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New Testament • Re: 1 Peter 4:3 πεπορευμένους
Paul-Nitz wrote:
Thanks. That’s simpler and helpful. The addition of either ημιν and υμιν are variant readings here, by the way.
Why would we expect a Dative Ptc?
(I just read Smyth Section 1497 and 1498 about the Dative Ptc. Those descriptions don’t seem to fit here.)

Because ἀρκετός normally takes the dative + infinitive, so a participle modifying ὐμῖν or ἡμῖν would also normally be in the dative, πεπορευομένοις. That’s what motivates people to try to explain the accusative…

Statistics: Posted by Barry Hofstetter — May 3rd, 2014, 6:49 am

Romans 3:19

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New Testament • Re: Parsing of Rom 3:19 and ἵνα clause as complement

It seems agreed that we distinguish “semantics” and “(discourse) functions” of a word, and
we should not transfer the functions of the word derived from context to the semantics of the word.

In connection with ἱνα I would pose a hypothesis that
ἱνα introduces a non-indicative (modal) content
that is potential, contingent, etc in contrast to the content introduced by a ὁτι clase, which is actual.
That is the semantics of ἱνα. More than that, e.g. wish, intention, purpose, obligation, command, etc
is derived from context.

I think that this is the minimum that Sim proposes after all things that look like over-interpretation are filtered out.

To support this hypothesis, let me cite two more examples in additionn to the one already given.

(1) The original example,

εκηρυσσεν τον Ιησοῦν ὁτι οὗτος εστιν ὁ υἱοσς τοῦ θεοῦ.
He was proclaiming that Jesus is the son of God.
VERSUS
Και εξελθοντες εκηρυξαν ἱνα ὁτιμετανοῶσιν.
Going out, they preached that people should repent.

Here the ὁτι clause and the ὁτι clause correspond to each well.
The only difference seems that the one describes an indicative content, whereas
the other a non-indicative content. The more specific content is derived from the context and the
nature of the main verb.

(2)
LXX Exo 6:11.
εισελθε λαλησον Φαρθω βασιλεῖ Αιγυπτου ̔ινα εξαποστειλῃ τους υἱους Ισραελ εκ τῆς αυτοῦ.
KJV: Go in, speak unto Pharaho king of Egypt, that he let the children of Israel go out of his land.

Here ̔the ινα clause specifies the content of the request. To think about “a purposed result”
seems to be an over-interpretation.

(3) Num 21:5
και κατελαλει ὁ λαος προσ τον θοεν και κατα Μωυσῆ λεγοντες ἱνα τι εξͅγαγες ἡμας εξ Αιγυπτου..
The people spoke against God and against Moes, saying “Why did you bring out out of Egypt..”

[Similarly with 2Sa 19:12]

Here ̔the ινα clause introduces a direct question, meaning that Moses shouldn’t have done that,
which is a non-indicative content.

Let me present two verses from LXX as examples where the ̔the ινα clause is the content of speech.

If I apply this idea to Rom 3:19, I could obtain:

[With reference to ] what the law says to those in the law, it (= the law) speaks that every mouth
should be stopped and all the world should be guilty before God.

[ It is difficult to express the subtle nuance of Greek subjunctive in English. So, the use of “should” should
be simply taken to indicate that it is a pointer fo the subjunctive verb in Greek. ]

Here I took ὁσα ὁ νομος λεγει τοῖς εν τῷ νομῳ to be an instance of the accusative of reference.

A similar construction is found in Rom 10:5:

Μωυσῆ γαρ γραφει την δικαιοσυνην την εκ τοῦ νομου ὁτι ὁ ποιησας αυτα ανθρωποσ ζησεται εν αυτοις.
Moses writes with reference to the righteousness from the law that the person who does them shall live in them.

Statistics: Posted by moon — June 29th, 2014, 7:34 am

Luke 1:5

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New Testament • Re: Luke 1:5: EGENETO’s function
RandallButh wrote:
Moon,

Yes, you can say that both egeneto structures provide setting material. However, they are two structures and it is useful to track them separately. The subject structure will introduce participants. The subjectless structure will provide a setting.

Commentators on Acts and Luke have led themselves astray by missing the distinction and making statements like “Luke uses the egeneto structure in both Luke-Acts,” implying that there is no qualitative difference. But there is. And it leads to a significant reappraisal of both works and fits well with other data.

Randall, thanks for the answer. So, are you saying:

(1) The EGENETO + subject structure is both found in Luke and LXX, and can be used to introduce a participant/character as sort of “setting” for a story..
(2) But this subject structure is NOT unique to LXX [Hebrew Bible], and can be a good Greek idiom.
(3) So, only the subjectless EGENETO structure can indicate the relatedness to Hebrew source.

Moon Jung

Statistics: Posted by moon — June 21st, 2014, 10:03 pm

Acts 13:22

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New Testament • Re: Acts 13:22 [ανδρα] κατα την καρδιαν μου
David Lim wrote:

Alan Patterson wrote:Barry wrote:

Well, then, what do you think it means? Yes, it’s God’s heart, but it describes David as being a man after God’s heart, following God. How can it mean otherwise than being devoted to God?

It is not DAVID’s devotion to, but it is GOD’s appreciation of…. At least, that’s how it appears on the surface, imo.

I don’t see “appreciation” written in that phrase, but I see the same that Barry says. The phrase just means “a man who does things according to God’s heart”. That is pretty much the same as “a man devoted to God”.

Right. It’s telling us what David is like, not what God is like.

Statistics: Posted by Barry Hofstetter — May 2nd, 2014, 7:47 pm

1 Thessalonians 4:16

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New Testament • Re: 1 Thessalonians 4:16

1Th. 4:15 Τοῦτο γὰρ ὑμῖν λέγομεν ἐν λόγῳ κυρίου, ὅτι ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν τοῦ κυρίου οὐ μὴ φθάσωμεν τοὺς κοιμηθέντας· 16 ὅτι αὐτὸς ὁ κύριος ἐν κελεύσματι, ἐν φωνῇ ἀρχαγγέλου καὶ ἐν σάλπιγγι θεοῦ, καταβήσεται ἀπ᾿ οὐρανοῦ καὶ οἱ νεκροὶ ἐν Χριστῷ ἀναστήσονται πρῶτον, 17 ἔπειτα ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι ἅμα σὺν αὐτοῖς ἁρπαγησόμεθα ἐν νεφέλαις εἰς ἀπάντησιν τοῦ κυρίου εἰς ἀέρα· καὶ οὕτως πάντοτε σὺν κυρίῳ ἐσόμεθα.

Spent some time looking over the exegetical history from John Calvin to J. Weima[1].

He employs the term κελεύσματος, (shout,) and afterwards adds, the voice of the archangel, by way of exposition, intimating what is to be the nature of that arousing shout—that the archangel will discharge the office of a herald to summon the living and the dead to the tribunal of Christ.
John Calvin

Paul is invoking an eschatological – apocalyptic scenario where 98% of the scenario is left to be filled in by the reader. Not sure what can be assumed about the Thessalonian’s familiarity with Second Temple Apocalyptic literature but that isn’t the problem. Paul invokes the scenario as if they were familiar with it. In the apocalyptic literature divine commands are often delivered by a subordinate agent, for example the opening of the seals in the Apocalypse where The Lamb opens the seals but a command is given by one of the living beings:

Rev. 6:1 Καὶ εἶδον ὅτε ἤνοιξεν τὸ ἀρνίον μίαν ἐκ τῶν ἑπτὰ σφραγίδων, καὶ ἤκουσα ἑνὸς ἐκ τῶν τεσσάρων ζῴων λέγοντος ὡς φωνὴ βροντῆς· ἔρχου.

J. Weima[1] disagrees, he thinks that αὐτὸς ὁ κύριος nails down ὁ κύριος as the agent of κελεύσματι. I don’t follow that. ἐν κελεύσματι is an attendant circumstance. The pronoun αὐτὸς ὁ κύριος draws attention to identity of the agent in the main verb καταβήσεται ἀπ᾿ οὐρανοῦ.

Ran across a somewhat tangential observation about the constituent order in this passage. αὐτὸς ὁ κύριος is a point of departure followed by a long marked focal constituent ἐν κελεύσματι, ἐν φωνῇ ἀρχαγγέλου καὶ ἐν σάλπιγγι θεοῦ in the pre-verbal slot[2]. This doesn’t particularly address the question at hand but I thought someone might like to read this paper.

[1] a Google search: φωνῇ ἀρχαγγέλου who is speaking, delivered among others J. Weima 2014,

1-2 Thessalonians (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)
By Jeffrey A. D. Weima, 2014

[2] See page 25, Greek Word Order in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:11 Stephen Wunrow April 16, 2013
https://www.academia.edu/25302324/Greek … _4_13_5_11

Statistics: Posted by Stirling Bartholomew — January 20th, 2017, 4:06 pm

John 7:49

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New Testament • Re: John 7:49
Rhoover60 wrote:
J. Robie, thanks. I read the passage from Jannaris and noticed this phrase, “Nevertheless, it is not rigidly adhered to even by A[ttic?] writers. etc.” This points out what probably happened in my thinking. I falsely imagined that language had a mathematical precision to it!! Hopefully, I will learn from this. More Regards.

No such thing as mathematical precision in any language. In the case of the neuter plural/singular verb, the verb most often goes into the plural when people are the referent of the noun, though even that is not an absolute usage.

Statistics: Posted by Barry Hofstetter — January 1st, 2017, 9:16 am

Romans 1:27

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New Testament • Re: Romans 1:27

I don’t know if you would find this helpful, but a really technical analysis of Ancient Greek participles and their relation to the main verb is found here in a article by Dag Haug and Corien Bary: http://semprag.org/article/download/sp.4.8/pdf_1 A poster of their views in brief can be found here: http://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/english/rese … poster.pdf

The participles you point out would be considered “elaborations” and their function is to provide more information about the main verb. They are not intended to interact with the time of the context (just that of the main verb) or to introduce a new event time into the discourse. In Wallace’s terms, they would be classified as a circumstance participle of manner or something like that.

Statistics: Posted by Stephen Carlson — February 14th, 2014, 4:31 pm

Matthew 1:22

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New Testament • Re: Matt 1:22 τοῦτο δὲ ὅλον γέγονεν, in whose voice?

Thank you, Dr. Carlson. I thought that may have been what you were meaning. I did not notice the “point of departure” in the first example. It is worse when I admit I was reading Levinsohn prior to making that post. :oops:

Dr. Conrad, your post contained some information that I need to investigate. Thank you.

Statistics: Posted by Wes Wood — January 29th, 2014, 8:31 am

John 8:33

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New Testament • Re: John 8:33 Antecedant of “they”
Hefin J. Jones wrote:
Focusing on the forest might take us out of b-greek.

That depends partly on which forest you focus on, but I do think we need to be careful. Here’s a forest that interests me: my impression is that John is very careful in his use of antecedents and pronouns. Iver’s interpretation seems to require a level of imprecision that I would expect in Mark but not in John, but this is purely my impression, based largely on the wonderfully precise and poetic use of reference in the first chapters of John and 1 John.

I have not yet looked carefully at the passages Iver has brought up, I am going to take a look and see if I can find similar examples of imprecise use of antecedents in John. Can anyone think of such examples?

Statistics: Posted by Jonathan Robie — March 14th, 2014, 9:39 am

2 John 1

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New Testament • Re: 2 John 1 ἐγώ

Stephen, are you familiar with Raymond Brown’s 1978 book, The Community of the Beloved Disciple? It’s speculative, to be sure, but he argues that the Johannine community developed separately from the apostolic church but merged with it toward the end of the first century, at which point the Johannine community suffered a schism in which a “Gnostic-like” majority group walked out “into the world”. Brown’s proposition is that the Johannine epistles are intended to point the right understanding of the Johannine gospel and to warn against the schismatic group, the second and third letters focusing more on those in the schismatic group. That, at least, is my recollection of it, but something like that must be involved in these letters.

Statistics: Posted by cwconrad — January 10th, 2014, 10:47 am

2 John 2

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New Testament • Re: 2 John 2 διὰ τὴν ἀλήθειαν
Stephen Carlson wrote:

David Lim wrote:Like Carl, I take “δια την αληθειαν” to modify “αγαπω”. If I were to give a reason it would be that it is an adverbial prepositional phrase and must modify a verb form, and the nearest one that fits would be “αγαπω” (not “εγνωκοτες”).

Well, there are three possible verbal forms to pick from in order of proximity, ἐγνωκότες, ἀγαπῶ, and the implied γράφει/γράφω. I don’t quite see how it fits better with ἀγαπῶ than with γράφω, however. I can see how giving a reason fits better with writing than with loving, but how would it work with your option: I love you in truth on account of the truth abiding in us? Please explain this further.

I think my explanation wasn’t clear enough. I took “the truth that remains in us” to refer to “the instruction (singular abstract noun) from God that remains in us”, which includes the laws, teachings, revelations, … In the writer’s views, it is natural for anyone, not just him, who loves the laws and teachings of God, to also love “the chosen lady”, and it is not just any type of love (which may be based on many things) but love that is based on truth. What it means for love to be based on truth is explained by the writer later, that it is a very logical thing (now this is going to be slightly interpretive):
[1 John 4:21] and this commandment we have from him: that the [one] who loves God is to love also his brother.
[1 John 5:2] in this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and keep his commandments.
In the first statement he says that to love his brothers (including the chosen lady) is actually a commandment from God (which is part of “the truth”).
In the second statement he says that by loving God and keeping his commandments we love the children of God, which is a natural consequence of the first statement.
This is the way the love is “because of the truth”.

Stephen Carlson wrote:

David Lim wrote:I would take it to be a separate statement, with the focus on the whole “μεθ ημων εις τον αιωνα”. But I’m curious as to the suggested possibility that “εσται” represents the future participle; are there any examples you know that indicate the existence of such a phenomenon of finite verbs that seem to take the place of participles?

The statement about “focus” is confusing, because it is a technical term (where only μεθ’ ἡμῶν is in focus, based on fronting: the whole statement is not focus). As for the other issues, there is a certain parallelism between stating that the truth abides within us and then asserting that it will be with us forever. The parallelism of thought, however, is broken by the switch from participle to finite verb form. As you know, participles often do the work of finite verbs.

Indeed participles can easily take the place of finite verbs in various ways, but I understood you (and I think Carl also) to mean that “εσται” functions as a participle, which is the reverse direction. For that I would like to see some examples if you know of any.

Stephen Carlson wrote:

David Lim wrote:I understand “εν αληθεια” similarly as “in truth” (“according to what is true”), while “η αληθεια” here refers to “the truth” (“the commandments/teachings/revelations from God”). The former is indefinite, which is why it is the latter that is described as “remaining in us”. Of course, in this context the former implicitly refers to the latter; “it is because of the instruction from God that we keep in our hearts, which is truth, that we love the chosen lady, and not just I but also all the ones who have received this instruction, and this instruction will remain with us for ever.”

This explanation is a little confusing if not contradictory, because it is asserted that the former is indefinite but also that it refers to something identifiable. How can it be both? At any rate, I was thinking about the NET Bible’s note on the former:

The prepositional phrase ἐν ἀληθείᾳ (en alhqeia) in 2 John 1 is similar to 3 John 1, although it is not qualified there as it is here (see 3 John 1). This is not merely the equivalent of an adverb (“truly”), but is a theological statement affirming the orthodoxy of Gaius, to whom the letter is addressed. “Truth” is the author’s way of alluding to theological orthodoxy in the face of the challenge by the opponents (see 1 John 3:19).

Aside from the confusion over which of the little Johns is addressed to Gaius, they take the phrase ἐν ἀληθείᾳ not be merely adverbial but a reference to orthodoxy. I think you’re doing similar but also trying to have the adverbial usage too?

I do take it as adverbial, but I think it remains an indefinite reference. It is possible for an indefinite reference and a definite reference to refer to essentially the same thing because of the context, though in general it is not the case. For example, we can say “God has power.”, where “power” is indefinite in the sentence itself. At the same time “the power of God” is definite. In the former, we could argue that the indefinite “power” refers to power in general that others may also have, but it is also true that in such contexts we are usually talking about God’s power and not about power in general, so in the end it refers indirectly to the same as the definite reference. In the same way, the indefinite “truth” in “in truth” refers to truth in general, which is why I tried to explain the phrase as “according to what is true” to bring out the indefiniteness. Of course, the context tells us that the writer is not just talking about doing things according to what is true in general, but doing things according to a specific “truth” which appears to refer to “instruction from God”.

Statistics: Posted by David Lim — January 13th, 2014, 10:14 pm