[B-Greek] Question about Matthew 11:14

Jim West jwest at highland.net
Wed Dec 14 13:19:29 EST 2005



Octavio Rodriguez wrote:
> Dear Sir:
> 
>   My interest is about  this sentence : Matthew 11:14 : hAUTOS ESTIN HLIAS.
> 
> Elias is a definite noun. This is  the proper name of an ancient famous
> prophet. However, regarding the semantic of this passage,
>  i think that this proper name in this sentence can be a prototype. The real
> meaning of this is "John is what Elias was".

According to Zwingli, "estin" can = "signify".  This is probably an 
accurate rendering in some contexts but I'm not so sure it works here. 
A more straightforward rendering might be "and if you wish to accept it, 
  he is Elijah, the one who is to come"  or "... he is "Elijah-like ..." 
which I think communicates the idea of the phrase pretty well.

> 
>  Therefore, we can translate it  as "This(John) is similar to Elias".
> 
> I don�t know if in any other place this clause (A ESTIN B ) could be
> regarded in the same sense like Matthew 11:14.
> In other words : Which are the examples in which "A estin B" or "A B
> estin" is equivalent to "what A is/was,  B is/was " ?.

As I hinted above, Zwingli uses "estin" in the sense of "signifies" in 
connection with the Lord's Supper- i.e., "this signifies my body" which 
of course caused Luther all kinds of problems.  But that's another tale 
for another day.

Best

Jim

-- 
D. Jim West
Biblical Studies Resources -  http://web.infoave.net/~jwest
Biblical Theology Weblog -  http://biblical-studies.blogspot.com



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