[B-Greek] John 7:31, case & function of rel. pron.?

bgreek at ntresources.com bgreek at ntresources.com
Fri Aug 1 22:17:13 EDT 2003


I've been mussing over the relative pronoun, hWN, in John 7:31. Why 
is it genitive? I concluded that it is probably due to the 
comparative adj. PLEIONA in the preceding phrase and is thus a 
genitive of comparison (& then discovered that BDAG cites it as such, 
s.v. POLUS.1.b, p. 848). But how then does hWN function in its own 
clause (hWN hOUTOS EPOIHSEN;)? I assume it would have to be taken as 
the dir. object of POIEW--but that seems odd to me. POIEW doesn't 
normally take its D.O. in gen. case (does it?). Although P. has a 
very broad semantic range, its D.O. is almost always acc. (or occas. 
dat.). I don't remember P. with a gen. D.O. elsewhere, nor do I find 
reference to any such use in BDAG or Wallace. (I'm at home this 
evening, so I don't have access to other sources to check this 
further.) The sense is clear enough; to paraphrase, "the Messiah 
won't do greater signs/miracles than [the signs] that this one is 
doing will he?" (Implied answer: 'no' --MH.) Any thoughts or 
suggestions?

Rod Decker
Baptist Bible Seminary
Clarks Summit, PA

-- 
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The Deckers . . . from the mountains of NE Pennsylvania
    Rod's web site: <http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/>
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