[B-Greek] John 10:29

Iver Larsen ialarsen at multitechweb.com
Wed Feb 23 00:09:33 EST 2005


>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 think Metzger is right on that score.

>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".


> [Carl:] 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.
> --
>
UBS4/NA27: hO PATHR MOU hO DEDWKEN MOI PANTWN MEIZON ESTIN (only found in
first hand of Vaticanus, corrected later in the same ms as it obviously
cannot be correct)

I would agree that none of the two variants listed nor the UBS4/NA27 text
yields a satisfactory sense and therefore none of them are likely to be
original.

There are several mss variants that do yield a satisfactory sense, and it is
that sense, rather than the UBS/NA text that pretty much all translations
(except the non-sensical TEV rendering) have decided to translate, simply
because the context demands it. IMO, that is one of the major differences
between Bible translators and textual critics. Translators emphasize sense
and context, textual critics emphasize speculations as to assumed intentions
behind assumed scribal changes. Metzger dismisses any variant with hOS
basically because the hOS would make good sense in the context, and
therefore there would be no need to intentionally change it. The problem
with this kind of reasoning is that it ignores the common phenomenon of
"typos", i.e. unintentional errors by an early scribe. Even if the hO were
original, which we can never know, most modern translators would still
translate the intended contextual meaning, i.e. hOS, rather than the typo or
unintentional error in the original, i.e. hO.


P66 has: hO PATHR MOU hOS EDWKEN (MOI) MEIZWN PANTWN ESTIN
The majority of mss have: hO PATHR MOU hOS DEDWKEN MOI MEIZWN PANTWN ESTIN
A few have: hO PATHR MOU hOS DEDWKEN MOI AUTA MEIZWN PANTWN ESTIN

Both EDWKEN and DEDWKEN make good sense and both are found in similar
constructions in John's gospel.

Iver Larsen
Translation Consultant





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