[B-Greek] Phil 2:11
bgreek at ranulf.net
bgreek at ranulf.net
Tue Oct 14 10:34:41 EDT 2003
> Thank you for your answer. Still we find in John 20:31 "hOTI IHSOUS ESTIN
> hO CRISTOS".
> If I am not mistaken, this gospel was written rather late?
This is a rather different example, because we have a definite predicating
verb and have no option but to render it as "...that Jesus is the
Christ/Messiah".
If the predicate verb was missing, i.e. "hOTI IHSOUS hO CRISTOS", we would
know that CRISTOS was an adjective rather than a complement which just
wouldn't make sense. Possibly we could construe it as "...that the Christ
is Jesus-like". But AFAIK, you can't turn a proper name into an adjective.
> > > ... hOTI KURIOS IHSOUS CRISTOS.
> > Most people will argue that by this time in the development of
> > early Christian thought (by the time of Paul's involvement),
> > IHSOUS CRISTOS has become a fixed name. Thus, KURIOS would be
> > taken as the compliment.
With no article, as you say you can't say for definite which of KURIOS
or CRISTOS is acting as a predicate, however, the term KURIOS IHSOUS
doesn't appear as a name anywhere, whereas IHSOUS CRISTOS appears many,
many times. So, it's fair to assume that, as Jason wrote, IHSOUS
CRISTOS is an accepted "common name" for Jesus, and KURIOS is the
complement.
Ranulf Doswell
Coventry, UK
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