[B-Greek] 1 John3:1 - 'called' by whom?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Apr 23 14:14:33 EDT 2003
At 2:00 PM -0400 4/23/03, Greg Stovell wrote:
>I'm new to the lists, and looking at the lectionary reading for May 4
>(I hope it's not too early to post)
>
>1 John 3:1 hINA TEKNA QEOU KLHQWMEN (in order that we may/should be
>called children of God)
>
>Is there anything in the grammar that tells us WHO should call us
>'children of God'? My initial reading is that KLHQWMEN is not
>necessarily pointing to the Father doing the action. Does this imply
>that neither the Father, nor ourselves (since it is passive) call us
>children of God, but that this action relies on others (outsiders
>maybe)?
>
>The implications are interesting, but I'd like to know if I'm jumping
>to conclusions the text does not offer.
Two points come to my mind at once:
(a) from the gospel of John 1:12 ... hOSOI DE ELABON AUTON, EDWKEN AUTOIS
EXOUSIAN TEKNA QEOU GENESQAI ... In terms of tradition, I think the
conception goes back all the way to Yahweh's "adoption" of Israel as His
"first-born son" in Exodus 3 and Christian adaptations to that model of
what in Greek came to be called TEKNOPOIIA;
(b) I think that KALEISQAI as a middle-passive (the aorist of which would
in fact be KLHQHNAI) need not bear so strictly in a literal sense the idea
of "giving a name" so much as "bearing a name"--i.e. KALEISQAI TEKNA QEOU
can have the sense "bear the name of children of God."
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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