On the syntactical description John 5:7,8

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VTsialas
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Joined: August 28th, 2018, 12:46 pm
Location: Athens, Greece

On the syntactical description John 5:7,8

Post by VTsialas »

I read yesterday the insightful comments of Daniel Wallace on John 5:7,8

Ὃτι τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες, τὸ Πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ τὸ αἷμα, καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν

His text can be found at p. 118-9 https://www.ibr-bbr.org/files/bbr/BBR_2 ... Spirit.pdf
I can copy his words if needed.

My question has to more do with the terminology.

Wallace is saying that the most possible explanation for the use of the masculine participle is not the personality of the Spirit and thus a phenomenon of constructio ad sensum, but the metaphor of the “three witnesses”, which surrounds “spirit, water and blood”.
1) If we don’t have here a constructio ad sensum, is it technically proper to talk about a syntactical discord?
2) If the phrase Πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ τὸ αἷμα is just an apposition, isn’t it syntactically similar with John 14:26?
(ὁ δὲ παράκλητος, τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ὃ πέμψει ὁ πατὴρ ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου, ἐκεῖνος ὑμᾶς διδάξει πάντα)

I am grateful for your time.
Barry Hofstetter
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Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: On the syntactical description John 5:7,8

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

I have never read Wallace on the Comma Johannaeum, but I have been arguing for quite a while now that the it's an issue of apposition and not "grammatical concord," meaning that there is no issue at all with the authentic text.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
MAubrey
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Re: On the syntactical description John 5:7,8

Post by MAubrey »

What Barry said.

To add: the participle needs to agree with τρεῖς...which is non-neuter (i.e. the masculine & feminine forms are identical). If anything here is interesting with regard to gender is the shift here: οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν, but even then. It's just "interesting", not ungrammatical.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
Koine-Greek.com
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