Comparing ALLOS and hETEROS

c stirling bartholomew cc.constantine at worldnet.att.net
Wed Jun 27 13:50:44 EDT 2001


on 6/26/01 5:30 PM, Ben Crick wrote:

> On Tue 26 Jun 2001 (16:06:22), brandonwason at calvarychapel.com wrote:
>> The verse I had in mind was John 14:16. Here it says that Father will
>> give another (ALLOS) Counselor- thus (so the argument goes) the Spirit
>> is of the same kind (nature?) as the Son. I'm not trying to start a
>> theological discussion...it's obviously not the right place for that. I
>> am looking for
>> word usage and the *principle* of drawing theological conclusions from the
>> word usage. I don't want your interpretations of the verse. Thanks for
>> your thoughts.
> 
> Brandon:
> 
> I respectfully suggest that you look up Galatians 1:6-7 in your GNT and
> consult any half-decent Commentary on the Greek text...
> 
> ERRWSQE
> Ben

 Ben,

Took you up on this. First problem was finding a  half-decent commentary
since I don't tend to keep those in my libarary. I looked at H. Ridderbos
(NICNT, 1953) and  F. Rendall (ExpGT). Then I looked at the decent
commentaries.

This exercise didn't shed much light on the question about Jn. 14:16. The
comments on Gal. 1:6-7 can be sorted by publication date. The guys who
published prior to Ernest Hemmingway tend to maintain the hETEROS/ALLOS
distinction (see Lightfoot, Alford, Meyer, F. Rendall) and the guys who
published after about 1950 tend to play down this distinction (see
Ridderbos, FF Bruce (NIGTC)). I suspect this represents a general
development in philology, specifically the methodology of lexical semantics,
between 1850 and 1950. I didn't do a large survey, just what was handy.

Even if we can establish that Paul maintained a strict distinction between
hETEROS/ALLOS (doubtful, see 2Cor 11:4 where  hETEROS/ALLOS seem to be used
without drawing any contrast) but even if we could establish a strict
distinction in Paul's usage what would this tell us about Jn. 14:16? As
noted previously John's usage of  hETEROS/ALLOS does not support the
distinction:

>ALLOS  "another of the same kind,"
> hETEROS  "another of a different kind"

Note that Ben didn't tell us his view Jn. 14:16, just sent us to read about
Gal. 1:6-7, so my comments are not really address to Ben's reading of Jn.
14:16 since I don't know what that is.

Clay

--  
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062





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