JN 9:27

Dan and Rachel King dan_rach at ntlworld.com
Fri Aug 9 12:42:46 EDT 2002


MH KAI hUMEIS QELETE AUTOU MAQHTAI GENESQAI;

All the English translations I have seem to translate this along the lines
of "Do you want to become his disciples too?" From my reading of John it
seems that he keeps a very clear grammatical distinction between negative
questions with OU and those with MH, in which the former are usually
rhetorical and expect the answer yes (e.g. 7:19, 'Didn't Moses give you the
law?') and the latter either expect the answer no or come somewhere close to
it (e.g. 6:67, 'You don't want to leave as well, do you?' ).

So shouldn't this verse best be translated something like, "You don't want
to become his disciples too, do you?", which would give quite a different
attitude and feel to the whole dialogue?

Can anybody shed any helpful light on this one, and perhaps put better than
I can the distinction between MH and OU in these cases?

Dan King




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