John 3:21
Mike Sangrey
msangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Tue Aug 20 11:13:30 EDT 2002
On Mon, 2002-08-19 at 22:09, Mark Wilson wrote:
>
>
> hO DE POIWN THN ALHQEIAN ERCETAI PROS TO FWS, hINA FANERWQHi AUTOU
> TA ERGA hOTI EN QEWi ESTIN EIRGASMENA
>
> The idea seems to me to be that one comes to the light in order
> to show forth that his/her deeds were done "in God." This light shines
> upon the deeds so that those who care to look upon them can see that
> they were done "in God."
>
> What in the world does this phrase "in God" mean?
<snip>
For a little while now, I've thought that sometimes (maybe even
frequently) EN + <some personal referent> has the sense of an
intensified proper dative.
I start with A.T. Robertson's statement of the dative being "the case of
personal interest" and simply intensify it and arrive at "close,
personal association and/or relationship."
But how do I get there? Robertson cites (under EN in the "Big Brown
Book") 1 Cor. 14:11 and hesitantly says "we have EN used merely as the
dative". The text is:
EAN OUN MH EIDW THN DUNAMIN THS FWNHS, ESOMAI TWi LALOUNTI BARBAROS
KAI hO LALWN EN EMOI BARBAROS
I take Paul to be saying (essentially) "if I'm deaf and mute, I will be
a non-Greek to the one who can speak, and the one who can speak, as far
as I'm concerned, will also be a non-Greek." So, I take EN EMOI to mean
"in reference to what concerns me" and thus translate into English with
"as far as I'm concerned." It's essentially a dative, but I think it
emphasizes the association and relationship between the two people at
that point; and, given the context, emphasizes the communication
breakdown that occurs in such a situation. A simple dative would not
have added this emphasis; EN + <personal referent> does. Well, IMO, it
does.
Secondly, Robertson mentions, in regards to the dative, "The dative is
not a local case. There was originally no idea of place in it. It is
thus a purely grammatical case." And "the dative has a distinctive
personal touch not true of the others."
Also, when I see a preposition I note the case of the object in the
phrase, assess how that case fits into the sentence, and then allow the
preposition to "have its way" with the case. Again, to cite Robertson,
"`The preposition is, therefore, only an adverb specialized to define a
case-usage' (citing Giles, Man., etc)" He cites Blass when he says,
"the use of a preposition with nouns was `a practice which in the course
of the history of the language became more and more adopted in
opposition to the employment of the simple case.'" He goes on to
mention the Emperor Augustus was noted for his excessive use of
prepositions in his effort to speak more clearly." So, what we have
then in the development of the language is prepositions coming on board
to better define the core idea of the case. I didn't learn this very
well when it was taught.
Let me add a parenthesis here and hopefully balance this a little: As a
person becomes more fluent, the <preposition> + <case> construct becomes
an idiomatic unit; and that is what the grammars list. The point I'm
making here is that the natural training of the mind toward fluency
tends to not happen with the category approach to learning
prepositions. Therefore the person (the mind, actually) doesn't benefit
from the more foundational case idea first before it adds the
prepositional (adverbial) ideas of the prepositions. Perhaps this
feedback to those who teach Greek may be helpful. IMO, I think there
needs to be some kind of layering of the prepositions onto semantics of
the cases.
Anyway, what I'm saying is:
* The dative case is the case of personal interest, and
* EN, when used with a personal object intensifies this concept,
and
* therefore, the elements of personal relationship are made more
salient.
Here's how I see this playing out in John 3:21:
Jesus' argument in John 3:19ff proceeds as follows: Light has come into
the world, but people are attracted to the shadows because what they do
are evil things. They don't want to be exposed, so they hate the
light. But, whoever lives their lives according to the truth [or
perhaps, with integrity] comes into the light so that it becomes clear
that what they have done has been done in a relationship with God.
The implication, as I see it, is that the exposure validates the
relationship with God. This mirrors, or reflects John's recording of
Nicodemus' statement at the beginning of this section--cf 3:2 EAN MH Hi
hO QEOS MET' AUTOU, so there's a little bit of inclusio going on here,
too.
I know a number of people, when I've thanked them for their ministry,
have an almost knee-jerk reaction and say, "May God have the glory."
It's the same sort of thing here. The exposure of who they are
validates their relationship with God and they in turn recognize that
the value of their ministry ultimately is determined by Him alone.
--
Mike Sangrey
msangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Landisburg, Pa.
"The first one last wins."
"A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."
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