John 6:35

nick lunn nick_lunn at wycliffe.org
Sat Aug 24 13:48:10 EDT 2002


     On the variation in John 6:35, two comments:
     
     1. For what it is worth, the Textus Receptus and the Majority Text 
     have both verbs in the aorist subjunctive (probably thought not to be 
     sufficiently significant to be indicated in the UBS GkNT). The future 
     indicative is solely an Alexandrian reading. 
     (Out of interest, note that the parallelism in Rev 18:23 has the 
     aorist subjunctive in both lines, in TR, MT and also in UBS GkNT).
     
     2. Another possible, and perhaps more likely, explanation, which 
     really has little to do with Greek, would be an appeal to Hebrew 
     parallelism. Several commentaries take these words as a parallelism. 
     Jesus does not really intend to make a distinction between the 
     hungering and the thirst - the two clauses make a single semantic 
     unit. It is a common feature of such Hebrew parallelism that the verb 
     form will vary in the second line. A typical example of this is Psalm 
     2:1, 'Why do the nations rage (qatal); and the peoples imagine 
     (yiqtol) a vain thing?'
     There is a whole article on this by Randy Buth, entitled 'Taxonomy and 
     Function of Hebrew Tense-Shifting', START 15, 1986. (START used to be 
     published by SIL/Wycliffe Bible Translators).
     
     Hope this is of some interest.
     
     Nick Lunn
     Wycliffe Bible Translators
     Kenya
     
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: [b-greek] John 6:35
Author:  <babc2 at attbi.com> at Internet 
Date:    8/23/02 8:28 PM
     
     
 EIPEN AUTOIS hO IHSOUS: EGO EIMI hO
ARTOS THS ZWHS: hO ERCOMENOS PROS EME OU 
MH PEINASHi, KAI hO PISTEUWN EIS EME OU MH 
DIYHSEI PWPOTE.
     
The last part of this verse puzzles me.  The two clauses 
hO ERCOMENOS PROS EME OU MH PEINASHi  kai
hO PISTEUWN EIS EME OU MH DIYHSEI
seem to me completely parallel, but why is the verb in the first 
clause in the aorist subjunctive while the verb in the second clause 
is future indicative?
     
I'm sure it's something that ought to be obvious, but it isn't to 
me.Barbara D. Colt, mailto:babc2 at attbi.com
St John the Evangelist, San Francisco


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