perfect tense and John 1:3-4

Dan and Rachel King dan_rach at ntlworld.com
Mon Aug 19 09:02:28 EDT 2002


Interesting to note that although the UBS / NA27 have the text as you say,
the RSV and NIV have both ignored it in favour of the older orthography
which Iver prefers here. However, the RSV at least footnotes the alternative
here, as even does the TEV and NEB (although this latter actually chose to
follow the UBS choice in its main text), the NIV doesn't even footnote it.
Is there any way of resolving such an issue - it seems to me that it must
remain a matter of choice.

Dan King


----- Original Message -----
From: "Iver Larsen" <iver_larsen at sil.org>
To: "Biblical Greek" <b-greek at franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2002 6:30 AM
Subject: [b-greek] Re: perfect tense and John 1:3-4



> The last translation of John 1:3-4 caught my attention, mainly because
"What
> has existence was, in fact, Life in Him" makes no sense to me.
>
> The text is (punctuation added, but disputed):
> V. 3: PANTA DI' AUTOU EGENETO, KAI XWRIS AUTOU EGENETO OUDE hEN hO
GEGONEN.
> V. 4: EN AUTWi ZWH HN, KAI hH ZWH HN TO FWS TWN ANQRWPWN
>
> It makes good sense to me to understand v. 3 as saying in a typical Hebrew
> repetitive, parallel, emphatic style: EVERYTHING came into being through
his
> agency, and outside of his agency not one thing of that which (now) exists
> (or: has come into being), came into being.
>
> That v. 4 should start a new sentence is quite parallel to v. 1. A fronted
> topicalized "In HIM" seems both natural and common for John's style.
>
> So, what are the grammatical or contextual reasons for dividing the text
as
> the latest versions of the NA and UBS text have it?
> Bruce Metzger in his textual commentary strongly supports the punctuation
I
> have shown above, but he was outnumbered by a majority of the committee
for
> theological and historical reasons. One of Metzger's points is that if the
> other view had been correct, he would have expected ESTIN in v. 4 with the
> perfect, not HN (the HN was actually changed to ESTIN in a few less
reliable
> mss - Aleph and D).
>
> Iver Larsen





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