[B-Greek] John 1:24
Iver Larsen
Iver_larsen at sil.org
Sat Dec 6 04:50:05 EST 2003
>
> Frankly, Iver, I fail to see why the fact that APESTALMENOI HSAN
> is passive alters the possibility that EK TWN FARISAIWN is functioning as
a partitive
> subject.
Agreed, this is a minor consideration, but still part of the complex
equation. Is the partitive subject ever found with a passive verb?
> One of the difficulties of the passage resides in the question whether the
> persons referred to in 1:24ff. are in fact the same deputation or part of
> the deputation indicated in 1:19ff. with ... hOTE APESTEILAN [PROS AUTON]
> hOI IOUDAIOI EX hIEROSOLUMWN hEREIS KAI LEUITAS hINA ERWTHSWSIN AUTON ...
Very true. That is why one need to answer that question from context. There
is lot of linguistic and contextual evidence that it is the same group, but
I cannot see how the text can be understood to say it was a different group.
Their question in v. 25 indicates that they had been part of the previous
discussion about John being neither the Messiah, Elijah or the awaited
Prophet (like Moses). So, if this is not the same group, they must at least
have been present and heard the conversation, but then they are never
introduced as a separate group.
When one introduces new participants in a Greek discourse, there are normal
rules for such introduction, but they are not followed here. On the
contrary, the reference to the people already on stage through verbal
suffixes, and a periphrastic construction with a finite verb in the
imperfective indicates that it is the same group, but with some added
information about them, namely that they had been sent from the Pharisees.
> Priests and Levites are not Pharisees and I don't see why Pharisees should
> have dispatched priests and Levites to Galilee to interrogate John.
Being a priest and Levite is an occupation, being a Pharisee is a religious
conviction. The Pharisees in question were probably members of the
Sanhedrin, and that is why they had authority to send some junior priests
and Levites. I am not suggesting that all the Sanhedrin or even a majority
consisted of Pharisees, but we know that a good portion of them were.
The US Handbook on John says:
"'The messengers, who had been sent by the Pharisees' is the meaning given
this verse in TEV, RSV, JB, NAB, GeCL, and the Anchor Bible. Others (NEB,
Gdsp, TEV margin) take this with a meaning similar to Mft: "Now some
Pharisees had been sent to him." Both translations are possible on the basis
of the Greek, but the translation represented by TEV has in its favour that
it represents the more difficult translation in the context. The difficulty
is that priests and Levites would normally not have belonged to the
Pharisaic group, but would have been Sadducees. However, by the time this
Gospel was written, these distinctions were no longer important, because the
Pharisees were then the only representatives of Judaism. In fact, for John
the Pharisees have become synonymous with the religious leaders of the
Jewish people, who have the right to pass judgment. Generally they are
connected with Jerusalem as here (see 3.1; 7.32, 47f; 9.13, 15f, 40; 11.46f,
57; 18.3)."
I don't agree that the TEV rendering is the more difficult translation, nor
that the delegation of priests and Levites were necessarily Pharisees. But
the last point is important, because the conflict between the Pharisees
(almost equivalent to "Jews" in John) is a key theme. The priests and
Levites had been commissioned by those who sent them to ask specifically why
John was baptising people. I am not saying that all hOI IOUDAIOI at that
time were Pharisees, but those who were alarmed by John the Baptist's
activities, were the Pharisees. The Sadducees couldn't care less as long as
he stayed far away from Jerusalem and the temple.
>
> My current view is that NIV has probably got the text properly understood,
> whereas REB seems to mess things up with its relative clause, "who were in
> the deputation"--that's really quite different from KAI APESTALMENOI HSAN.
I had that view until a few days ago (without having studied the question in
detail as I have now). But when I was reading some recent research in Greek
discourse linguistics, I changed my view to the one that seems to me to fit
best linguistically and contextually.
Iver Larsen
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