[B-Greek] John 10:29

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Feb 22 07:24:32 EST 2005


At 9:48 AM +0100 2/22/05, Beata Urbanek wrote:
>I've got a problem with understanding two variants of this verse.
>
>1. hO PATHR MOU hO DEDWKEN MOI PANTWN MEIZWN ESTIN
>Birdsall says: "Barret translates it as a perfectly acceptable Greek
>sentence 'My Father in regard to what he has given me is greater than
>all'. (relative clause as an accusative of respect)
>B. Metzger says that this reading is impossible Greek and cannot be construed.
>Who is right?

I'd say the question here is what one means by an "acceptable Greek
sentence"; I'd say that there's nothing impossible about the Greek
construction grammatically but that it's almost impossible to make any
reasonable sense of it. What does it mean? (a) that it is fundamentally the
father's gift to Jesus that characterizes the distinctive superiority of
the father? (b) While other fathers have given their sons gifts and
therefore might be termed PATERES MEGALOI, Jesus' father has given an
incomparable gift to Jesus and must therefore be deemed MEIZWN PANTWN? I
don't think this is impossible grammatically, but it seems convoluted to
me--an odd way of expressing a notion that ought, particularly in as lucid
a writer as this one, to have been formulated more intelligibly, e.g.
MEIZWN PANTWN ESTIN hO PATHR MOU, hOS MOI DEDWKEN DWRON MEGISTON PANTWN.

>2. hO PATHR MOU hOS DEDWKEN MOI MEIZON PANTWN ESTIN
>Barret translates it: " My Father who gave them to me is greater than any
>other power".
>Forgive me  if it's a too basic question, but can it be here that neuter
>MEIZON is used instead of masculine?

I suppose he's taking it substantivally as neuter and also taking PANTWN as
neuter genitive plural: "is something greater than all things."

My own opinion, by which I would not lay much store here, is that NONE of
the variants (including the text presented in UBS4/NA27) yields a
satisfactory meaning.
-- 

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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