[B-Greek] Jo 1:37

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Sat Feb 15 01:25:20 EST 2003


> John 1:37
> KAI HKOUSAN OI DUO MAQHTAI ***AUTOU*** LALOUNTOS KAI HKOLOUQHSAN TW
> IHSOU.
>
> Here we have a GcP = Genitivus cum Participio
> "and the two disciples heard him speaking"
>
>
> Now P66, P75 et al read:
> KAI HKOUSAN OI DUO ***AUTOU*** MAQHTAI LALOUNTOS KAI HKOLOUQHSAN TW
> IHSOU.
>
> Is this grammatically correct? Here the AUTOU refers back to John, I
> presume: his = John's disciples.

I suppose a case could be made for it to be grammatically correct if we take
AUTOU with MAQHTAI and then there is no explicit subject for LALOUNTOS. At
least those who copied the MSS appear to have thought so.
But it is so unusual, and I would say abnormal, that it cannot possible be
the correct reading. I think it is more likely that the copyists
misunderstood OI DUO MAQHTAI AUTOU as if the AUTOU belonged to MAQHTAI as it
does in 1:35 where we read EK TWN MAQHTWN AUTOU. Having thus misunderstood
it, they may have felt that AUTOU should come first, although I cannot see
why. It is a good example of some of the careless mistakes we find in these
papyrus MSS. Do you have more examples like this?

There are lots of examples of	a genitive phrase/clause with a participle as
the complement of AKOUW in the NT, and they all include a subject for the
participle as far as I could see. In case anyone is interested in looking at
this construction I can give some references: Mrk 19:58, John 7:32, Acts
2:11, 6:11,14, 8:30, 10:46, 14:9, 15:12, 22:7, Rev 6:5, 8:13, 14:13, 16:5,7.
There is in interesting one with accusative in Acts 9:4.

Iver Larsen



More information about the B-Greek mailing list