[B-Greek] John 1 Questions
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at ioa.com
Thu Aug 4 07:29:38 EDT 2005
These questions seem to focus more on how to put phrases in John 1
into English rather than how to understand them as Greek.
On Aug 4, 2005, at 3:28 PM, Dony K. Donev wrote:
> I have several questions about John 1 as follows:
> 1:1 Is "in God" better translated "with God?"
The Greek doesn't have anything that could be rendered "in God"; it
has PROS TON QEON, which means something like "in the presence of" or
"face to face with."
> 1:2 Is "He" an appropriate rendering of OUTOS in v.2?
hOUTOS could be rendered with anything that makes clear that it
refers to the LOGOS
> 1:3 Is EV the end of the sentence in v.3
I assume that you mean hEN. That's the consensus of the committee
regarding the proper distribution of the elements. Metzger has a note
on this and the supposed doctrinal disputes that led to this
punctuation. On matters such as this you should look at the critical
apparatus and judge for yourself.
> 1:9 Since it can be both masculine and neuter, does ERKOMENON
> refer to the light or to every man?
ERCOMENON (not ERKOMENON) could be construed either way, but the NA27
editorial committee by virtue of their punctuation clearly understood
ERCOMENON with HN as a periphrastic imperfect functioning as the
predicate of TO FWS TO ALHQINON.
> 1:16 How does ANTI in v.16 translates, apart from the usual
> rendering of the phrase "grace for/upon grace?"
I frankly think this is rather speculative, but I've liked Raymond
Brown's view that the idea here is an image of water bubbling up
inexhaustibly as illustrated in the various Johannine expressions of
"abundant" life; if that's right, then the sense is "one grace after
another." But so far as I know this Johannine phrasing CARIS ANTI
CARITOS really has no parallel elsewhere for the usage of ANTI.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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