[B-Greek] why the hWN would be expected, but not hO in John 1.3?

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Mar 17 13:00:35 EST 2003


At 10:34 AM -0500 3/17/03, David Lew wrote:
>My b-greek fellows,
>
>    In his "The Gospel according to St. John", C. K. Barrett says at p.
>156 that "...and because after OUDE hEN, hWN ( rather than hO) GEGONEN
>would be expected."
>
>    I wonder why the hWN would be expected, but not hO?

Now I see that the only text you could be referring to is in the prologue, 1:3:

	CWRIS AUTOU EGENETO OUDE hEN hO GEGONEN

What we have here with hO (i.e. hO\) is "not a single thing that exists as
created" or something like that.

On the other hand I suppose that Barrett means that we'd expect a partitive
genitive with OUDEN or OUDE hEN, a hWN (or hW=N) representing EKEINWN hA:
"not a single one of those things which exist as created." And this is one
of a number of reasons why the NA27/USB4 committee preferred on the whole
to understand hO GEGONEN as belonging to a new sentence: "That which has
created existence ..." Metzger has a lengthy note on this in his _Textual
Commentary on the Greek New Testament_. As I recall, Iver has argued
recently that the sense of hO GEGONEN EN AUTWi ZWH HN is difficult. The
truth is, I think, that there are difficulties of one sort or another
whether one prefers to construe hO GEGONEN essentially with what precedes
or with what follows. While it may be true to say that we'd "expect" hWN
instead of hO after OUDE hEN, I wouldn't want to assert dogmatically that
hO GEGONEN is intolerable. Problems arise in one text in the GNT (and in
other Greek texts also) that aren't resolved by knowing what we'd expect
(although that's not an altogether negligible factgor either); we have to
make sense of what the text offers us, insofar as we're able.

-- 

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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