[B-Greek] 1 John3:1 - 'called' by whom?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Apr 23 16:29:38 EDT 2003
At 4:07 PM -0400 4/23/03, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>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?
Yes, I would indeed rule that out because I think that the notion of
adoption with regard to Israel and then more specifically of the Davidic
king is deeply enough rooted in the tradition that this is of a different
order from any use of CRISTIANOS as a pejorative appellation.
--
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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