[B-Greek] Accusative in John 2:11

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Aug 6 19:22:35 EDT 2003


At 5:28 PM -0500 8/6/03, Jason Hare wrote:
>Carl,
>
>If I understand you correctly, TAUTHN is feminine because of analogy with
>THN ARCHN. What if it is supposed to be referring to SHMEIA? If that were
>the case, would not THN ARCHN be appositive to TAUTHN?
>
>In other words: "He did this in Cana of Galilee, the first of [his] signs."
>What do you think? Is it not possible that the antecedent of TAUTHN is
>indeed SHMEIA (from SHMEIWN)??

No, not by analogy but because it agrees directly with it, as any adjective
qualifying a noun agrees with it in number, gender, and case. And in any
case, I don't really see how SHMEIWN, which is a genitive n. pl dependent
upon a noun which can only be ARCHN, could conceivably be an antecedent of
a feminine accusative singular demonstrative adjective. Are you suppose
that what we have is an alternative formulation of something like TOUTO TO
SHMEION EPOIHSE THN ARCHN TWN SHMEIWN? In that case THN ARCHN might be
considered appositive to TOUTO SHMEION, but that's very different from the
formulation we're presented with in the text in question.

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
>To: "Rob Matlack" <united_by_truth at myrealbox.com>
>Cc: "B-Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 11:27 AM
>Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Accusative in John 2:11
>
>
>> At 9:34 AM -0500 8/6/03, Rob Matlack wrote:
>> >TAUTHN EPOIHSE THN ARCHN TWN SHMEIWN hO IHSOUS EN KANA THS GALILAIAS
>> >I have two questions concerning this first clause of 2:11. First, the NET
>> >Bible note
>> >reads: "Jesus did this as the first of his miraculous signs. The sentence
>> >in Greek
>> >involves an object-complement construction. The force can be either
>'Jesus
>> >did this
>> >as,' or possibly 'Jesus made this to be,' The latter translation accents
>> >not only
>> >Jesus' power but his sovereignty too. Cf. also 4:54." I can see how this
>> >could be
>> >construed as and object-compliment construction, but could it not also be
>> >a simple
>> >appositive, so the NIV and ESV.
>> >
>> >Second, some manuscripts omit the THN before ARCHN. Is there any
>significant
>> >difference in meaning? Does the presence of the article lend itself more
>> >to the simple
>> >accusative understanding?
>>
>> I think you are raising more a question of the grammar of English
>> translation than of understanding the Greek text: TAUTHN THN ARCHN is a
>> unit and functions as the object of EPOIHSE--if that weren't so the TAUTHN
>> wouldn't be feminine. The reading TAUTHN ARCHN without the article is
>> intelligible but violates standard Greek grammar which calls for a
>> demonstrative such as hOUTOS always to be in a predicative position, which
>> in turn means that the article must appear with the noun. The Greek text
>> says, "performed this beginning of (his) miracles" although you could as
>> well translate TAUTHN THN ARCHN as "this first one."
-- 

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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