[B-Greek] John 1:24

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Dec 7 07:24:34 EST 2003


Perhaps we can reach closure on this question even if we can't reach a
consensus, Iver. I will agree with you that the context does make it appear
that the persons indicated in 1:24ff. were present at the same time and had
heard the questions and answers of 1:19-23. But I remain incredulous at the
suggestion that the Pharisees of 1:24 are simply mentioned to fill in the
detail omitted in 1:19 by telling us WHICH Jews sent the priests and
Levites to interrogate John and dubious also of the notion that the
Pharisees would have dispatched priests and Levites in particular to carry
out this sort of interrogation. That's perhaps remotely possible, I guess,
but it hardly seems likely to me. So I will persist in my view that EK TWN
FARISAIWN in 1:24 should be understood as a partitive subject of
APESTALMENOI HSAN, and add only that it appears to me that there may have
been Pharisees IN ADDITION TO priests and Levites in the group indicated by
the evangelist as coming from Jerusalem to interrogate John the
Baptist. While I don't make any assumptions about this evangelist's sources
in oral or written tradition, I do note that Mark's gospel repeatedly
points to Pharisees interrogating Jesus (Mk 2:16,18,24; 3:6; 7:1,3,5;
8:11,15; 10:2; 12:13); in Mk 7:1 they are referred to as coming from
Jerusalem to interrogate Jesus; in three instances in Mark they are
associated with Herodians or Herod (Mk 3:6, 8:15, 12:13); in 12:13 it is
the Sanhedrin that sends a mixed group of Pharisees and Herodians to put
the question about taxation to Jesus. Now of course our concern in John
1:24 is a deputation sent to question John the Baptist; I think it is
conceivable that the Sanhedrin might send a mixed delegation of Pharisees
and priests and Levites to interrogate John the Baptist or Jesus, but I
still don't think it very likely that the Pharisees themselves would send
priests and Levites to carry out this interrogation. Granting then that
there's more than one way to read John 1:24, I continue to think that
reading EK TWN FARISAIWN as partitive subject of APESTALMENOI HSAN is more
reasonable.

At 12:50 PM +0300 12/6/03, Iver Larsen wrote:
>>
>> 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
>
>---
>B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
>B-Greek mailing list
>B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek

-- 

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/



More information about the B-Greek mailing list