Relative Clause with Compound Antecedent

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magnvs
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Joined: September 20th, 2015, 7:35 pm

Relative Clause with Compound Antecedent

Post by magnvs »

I was looking at the last part of John 2:22...
καὶ ἐπίστευσαν τῇ γραφῇ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ ὃν εἶπεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς

At first it seemed obvious to me that the relative clause at the end went only with "τῷ λόγῳ" since "ὃν" matches its gender and not the gender of "τῇ γραφῇ" However, I started to wonder if it would be possible for a relative clause to have a compound antecedent. That is the clause introduced by "ὃν" goes with both "τῷ λόγῳ" and "τῇ γραφῇ." It's probably not the case here since the "writing" probably isn't something that was "said." Even if it may not be the case here, is this construction possible? If so, would the relative pronoun default to the masculine if there are multiple antecedents of mixed gender? If there are two singular antecedents (again assuming it's possible) would the relative pronoun be plural?
Stirling Bartholomew
Posts: 1141
Joined: August 9th, 2012, 4:19 pm

Re: Relative Clause with Compound Antecedent

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

John 2:22...
καὶ ἐπίστευσαν τῇ γραφῇ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ ὃν εἶπεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς

The "rules" for concord of the relative pronoun are summarized Smyth §2501-§2502. ἐπίστευσαν has two distinct dative arguments joined by καὶ. The antecedent of ὃν is τῷ λόγῳ. The case of the relative pronoun is dative in most NT mss. For "non-attraction" of the relative to the antecedent see ATR pp.714 bottom - 715, BDF §294.1.

"non-attraction" IMHO is pretty useless. I cannot recall a decent linguistic treatment of concord of the relative pronoun, my memory is fuzzy. I am sure there is one out there.

For a recent traditional treatment see: Reading Koine Greek: An Introduction and Integrated Workbook §10.17
By Rodney J. Decker
C. Stirling Bartholomew
Stirling Bartholomew
Posts: 1141
Joined: August 9th, 2012, 4:19 pm

Re: Relative Clause with Compound Antecedent

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

looking for something on this topic I found:

Deconstructing and Reconstructing Semantic Agreement:
A Case Study of Multiple Antecedent Agreement in Indo-European

Cynthia A. Johnson

Graduate Program in Linguistics
The Ohio State University
2014
PDF available online
C. Stirling Bartholomew
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