John 10:29

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jul 30 05:44:31 EDT 2002


I'm responding simultaneously to two posts from Wieland:

At 9:40 AM +0200 7/30/02, Wieland Willker wrote:
>Richard Ghilardi wrote in reply to Carlton Winbery:
>> But then the relative hO does not agree with its antecedent hO PATHR in
>> gender. I'd be willing to go along with this rendering if you can show me
>> other places in the NT where a relative does not agree with its
>> antecedent in gender -- both words being in the singular, please!
>> The reading with MEIZON seems to me less difficult because it may be
>> easily translated as: "What my Father has given me is greater than all
>> (things, people, whatever)."
>
>
>This is exactly the problem.
>The variants are possibly just a mix-up of Omega and Omicron. What I want to
>know is if
>>hO PATHR MOU hO DEDWKEN MOI MEIZWN PANTWN ESTIN
>
>nevertheless makes sense somehow? It is after all supported by:
>01, D, L, W, Psi, pc
>"The father, what he has given me, he is greater than all, ..."

I don't really think so, UNLESS one understands hO DEDWKEN MOI as a (rather
awkward) substantive clause in the adverbial accusative, adverbially
qualifying MEIZWN: "My father is greater than all with respect to what he
has given me." The only way it would make sense to me is if hO, which as
spelled and accented in our critical text can only be the neuter accusative
of the relative pronoun, is intended to be a nominative singular masculine
relative pronoun, which is to say, that this is a solecism of the kind
somewhat less uncommon in the text of Revelation.

At 9:46 AM +0200 7/30/02, Wieland Willker wrote:
>And how would you translate:
>hO PATHR MOU hOS DEDWKEN MOI MEIZON PANTWN ESTIN
>
>(that means hOS + MEIZON)
>
>This variant is supported by A, Bc2, Theta, al

This makes no sense at all--or hardly an acceptable sense: "My father, who
gave it to me, is a bigger (thing) than all others (things/persons)." This
appears to me a copyist's attempt to solve the problem of the neuter
accusative relative pronoun where a masculine nominative relative pronoun
should be expected--but if that's so, the copyist has formulated a still
more intolerable construction wherein the masculine PATHR becomes a thing
compared quantitatively with other things.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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