John 20:31 was Re: [B-Greek] Phil 2:11
Stephen C. Carlson
scarlson at mindspring.com
Wed Oct 15 02:02:14 EDT 2003
At 03:11 PM 10/14/03 -0400, Doug Hoxworth wrote:
>><Stephen>
>>It depends on what your mean by the stressed THE. I supose hOTI hO IHSOUS
>>ESTIN hO CRISTOS would work, but if you meant to also indicate the
>>uniqueness of the Messiah, then it may be more clearly rendered with MONOS
>>or MONOGENOS, etc.
>
><doug>
>but with what is above we may have just as much of a
>problem identifying the subject. my point was that perhaps
>both nouns are definite and the article is used on CRISTOS
>to emphasize it rather than to idetify the subject.
It is not just the presence of the article on CRISTOS that
makes it the subject; it is that fact plus the absence of
the article on IHSOUS is what strongly indicates that Jesus
is the predicate noun and the Messiah is the subject.
>besides the fact that in the context, IHSOUS is the
>subject not CRISTOS (cf. v. 30).
The fact that hO IHSOUS is the subject in John 20:30 has no
bearing on the construction of John 20:31, where IHSOUS is
anarthrous.
>i also wanted to emphasize that articles are used for more
>than just identifying the subject of a sentence when using
>the copula. so if this is his only argument, it does not
>appear fool-proof to me. if there is more than this to it,
>i'd be interested in hearing it.
In Greek, the article is regularly dropped from definite
nouns in the predicate, though Koine is a bit more forgiving
in retaining them than in Classical Greek. In John 20:31,
the article is dropped from IHSOUS but not from hO CRISTOS,
thus IHSOUS would be the predicate noun. See, e.g., Smyth
§§ 1126 ("[The article's] presence is often determined by
the need of distinguishing subject from predicate") and 1150
("A predicate noun has no article, and is thus distinguished
from the subject."); BDF § 273 ("Predicate nouns as a rule
are anarthrous" and "proper names are regularly anarthrous
in the predicate").
If you want to propose an exception to the general rule,
clear counter-examples would be appreciated.
>><Stephen>
>>Of course, but fronting achieves its effect when the subject and predicate
>>were already unambiguous. The issue here is identifying the subject and
>>predicate.
>
><doug>
>is fronting never used when the subject and predicate are
>ambigious? i don't understand your point. i was saying
>that most likely both IHSOUS and CRISTOS are definite and
>the subject is identified by the fronting as well as
>following the context down from v. 30.
In cases where the nouns both have the article or both lack
the article, you have to look at the word order. This is
not the situation, however, in John 20:31. To the extent
that fronting plays a role in John 20:31, it would mean
something like: "the Messiah is JESUS."
Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
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