[B-Greek] 1 John3:1 - 'called' by whom?

Jonathan Robie jonathan.robie at datadirect-technologies.com
Wed Apr 23 16:07:07 EDT 2003


At 02:14 PM 4/23/2003 -0400, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

>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."

This sounds like you would rule out the possibility that this might be a 
taunt, e.g. that Jews would frown on those who feel they can call God Abba, 
and say to them, "who do you think you are, children of God", eventually 
resulting in "children of God" as an ironic nickname for Christians?

Jonathan  



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