John 20:31 was Re: [B-Greek] Phil 2:11
Stephen C. Carlson
scarlson at mindspring.com
Thu Oct 16 09:57:59 EDT 2003
At 12:53 PM 10/15/03 -0400, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>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"
Thank you very much for this explanation. In your Englishing of it,
however, did you intend for "the one who is the Messiah, the Son of
God" to be in apposition of the subject "it" rather than Jesus?
>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."
You're right: there isn't much, if any, semantic difference between "Jesus
is the Messiah" and "the Messiah is Jesus" since the two are being equated.
Even so, I would suggest that is there is a slight difference in emphasis,
and, given that this clause occurs in a statement that many, but not all,
argue sets forth the purpose for writing the Gospel, this difference can
illuminate which part of the equation the Evangelist intended most to
clarify. To say more would be to go beyond the perimeters of B-Greek, but
I am pleased to learn that at least the grammatical part of Jackson's argument
is not completely off base.
>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."
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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