[B-Greek] IWANNHN 1:1

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Mar 3 19:55:24 EST 2005


At 6:33 PM -0600 3/3/05, Jason Broander wrote:
>Hi,
>
>    This is my first time posting to B-Greek; I just joined the list.
>I'm a 'little Greek', as is said, so bear with me if my questions seem a
>bit silly to the 'big greeks' out there.  I've got two questions.

Welcome aboard, Jason, and don't fear to raise questions of any sort, so
long as they focus upon the Greek language or upon a Greek Biblical text as
a Greek text. This list exists for beginners to get help with the most
elementary questions and for more experienced learners to raise questions
that arise at any point in the study of the language or of the Biblical
Greek text.

>The first is concerning the meaning of PROS in IWANNHN 1:1 -- "EN ARCE
>HN hO LOGOS, KAI hO LOGOS PROS TON QEON, KAI QEOS HN hO LOGOS."
>
>PROS is matched with TON QEON, which is, as all of you know, the
>accusative of hO QEOS.  My problem is in understanding why hO QEOS is in
>accusative and not dative, if the meaning is close to the famous
>translation of PROS as 'with'.  Maybe my problem is that my only lexicon
>is the 'Middle Liddell', but I can't find a satisfactory accusative
>meaning in either that lexicon or the full Liddell lexicon on Perseus.
>Is there a more nuanced meaning of PROS, with several different shades
>of meaning, than simply the oft-used meaning of 'with', or is this just
>a characteristic of KOINE that the classical lexicons miss?

PROS and PRO and PARA too are cognate forms of the same root with a
positional sense of "facing." Grasping the different case usages with each
of these prepositional forms does take some getting used to, but PROS is
most commonly used with an accusative in the sense "facing toward"; when
used with a dative it most often means "in addition to." In John 1:1 PROS
TON QEON means something like "confronting God (face-to-face)" and you can
see why that notion is commonly expressed with the English preposition
"with" in the sense "in the company of."

>My second question concerns Johns ussage of the definite article in the
>above-quoted verse.  John uses the definite article with every instance
>of LOGOS and QEOS but the last instance of QEOS.  This makes the famous
>translation 'and the word was God' quite obvious in English.  However,
>he uses the definite article with the other instance of QEOS, and it is
>typically deleted in translation.  I'm rambling...  My question is this:
>is there a certain meaning meant when John uses the definite article
>with the first instance of QEON, and a different meaning when he uses
>QEON without it the second time, even a subtle one?

There is an important difference between the two usages of QEOS in John
1:1: hO QEOS with the article is used as a proper name of God; in 1:1c QEOS
is a predicate noun to the subject hO LOGOS: the article designates the
subject in a copulative sentence; QEOS is in this instance not so much a
proper name as it is a qualitative substantive; the English equivalent of
QEOS HN hO LOGOS that has always appealed most to me is "and what God was,
the Word was"--i.e. "The Word was 'what God was'" You will find that many
words and much ink have been expended upon the best way to understand John
1:1c KAI QEOS HN hO LOGOS, and if you care to search the B-Greek archives
that go back (more or less) to 1992, you are likely to find about three
months worth (roughly 3-4 MB) of messages on that one part of one verse.
-- 

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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