John 20:31 was Re: [B-Greek] Phil 2:11
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Oct 15 12:53:52 EDT 2003
At 7:53 AM -0700 10/15/03, waldo slusher wrote:
>hOTI IHSOUS ESTIN hO CRISTOS
>
>> >It may be worth mentioning that the emphasis in
>> >constructions as this always falls on the
>> predicate,
>> >and I think we must go with "Jesus is THE MESSIAH."
>
>Carl then said...
>> I wonder whether the question is really so easily
>> decided; my own
>> experience is that the predicate word is normally
>> first in this sort of an
>> equative clause with ESTI(N).
>
>The subject of this conclusion begins in vs 30, hO
>IHSOUS. The stated purpose of this letter is to define
>who Jesus is, not who the Messiah is. And in vs 31,
>the predicate would be hO CRISTOS (which defines
>Jesus)... with hO hUIOS TOU QEOU in appostion to hO
>CRISTOS. So then, both hO CRISTOS and hO hUIOS TOU
>QEOU define Jesus, the subject of this passage and
>letter. This then becomes the conclusion John would
>have his readers acknowledge.
It is true enough that hO IHSOUS is the subject of the main clause in verse
30, but the focus of verses 30 and 31 rests upon the antithesis POLLA MEN
ALLA at the opening of verse 30 (where note that the subject hO IHSOUS is
delayed to follow the verb EPOIHSEN) and TAUTA DE at the opening of verse
31. I would still hold that in the noun clause which functions as the
object of PISTEUSHTE:
hOTI IHSOUS ESTIN hO CRISTOS, hO hUIOS TOU QEOU
the grammatical subject is hO CRISTOS with its appositive, hO hUIOS TOU
QEOU, and that IHSOUS is NOT the subject, but the predicate. At any rate, I
don't really think that the arthrous hO IHSOUS of verse 30 indicates that
IHSOUS must be the subject of verse 31.
The effect of this word-order, thus understood, in English might be
something like this:
"that it is Jesus, the one who is the Messiah, the Son of God"
It is hardly a surprise that translators in English would reverse the terms
of the equation to produce more idiomatic English phrasing, particularly
inasmuch as an equative clause such as this affirms the identity of the
nominal elements on both sides of ESTIN. This is ultimately a quibble of
sytactic structure, since there is not really any semantic difference
between "Jesus is the Messiah" and "the Messiah is Jesus." It will probably
not be a matter of consensus, either. I am reminded of Joshua Whatmough's
comment regarding the Accusative Absolute: "There are those who say that
this should really be called the Nominative Absolute, but since the subject
in it is a neuter substantive and the predicate is a neuter participle,
there's no way to determine whether it is Nominative or Accusative."
--
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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