Smart's rule and John 20:28

Stephen C. Carlson scarlson at mindspring.com
Wed Oct 25 05:14:29 EDT 2000


At 01:45 AM 10/25/00 +0000, Dan Parker wrote:
>While there are exceptions to G. Sharp's rule, there are none for M. Smart's rule :)

I believe Ps 5:2 LXX (hO BASILEUS MOU KAI hO QEOS MOU) has already
been mentioned.  This is an "exception" to the following "rule":

>"In native KOINE Greek when the copulative KAI connects two titles of
>personal description [viz. singular nouns, plural nouns, article noun kai
>noun constructions (e.g. 1Th 3:11) or compound proper name (e.g. 2Th
>2:16) which are both either articular or anarthrous]  and a personal
>pronoun in the genitive case modifies the first of the said titles, and is
>repeated with respect to the second title, there are always two persons
>(e.g. Jn 20:28; 1Th 3:11; 2Th 2:16;1Ti 1:1) or groups of persons  (e.g. Mt
>12:49; Mk 3:33-34)  in view."

One should not induce a rule solely from the observations in a limited
corpus such as the Greek NT, and it appears that Smart's "Rule" is a case
in point.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page   http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35



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