[B-Greek] John 9:3 punctuation question

George F Somsel gfsomsel at juno.com
Mon Mar 7 11:40:24 EST 2005


On Mon, 7 Mar 2005 11:10:57 -0500 "Peter Hamm"
<peter at hamm-multimedia.com> writes:
> I'm hoping that some insight from those more well versed in the 
> ancient
> manuscripts can help us with a question about John 9:3. Where the 
> text says
> ""but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in 
> his life"
> and THEN a period. Where did that period come from? When was it 
> decided,
> since there wasn't any punctuation in the original manuscripts. 
> Obviously
> there's a theological issue of whether God "caused" the man to be 
> born
> blind, but I'm more interested in the simple LINGUISTIC answer; 
> hence this
> post. Two separate commentaries I recently consulted suggest that 
> the phrase
> "so that the work of God might be displayed" should be seen as part 
> of the
> NEXT verse, meaning that "this thing" that happened was not that the 
> man was
> born blind, but that Christ came along at that time and for that 
> purpose. 
> 
> But no modern translation that I have encountered punctuates these 
> verses
> this way. The excellent NET Bible doesn't even have a footnote 
> dealing with
> this question (perhaps it should), and NA27 seems to indicate that 
> this
> verse in question doesn't even seem to have any significant 
> variation in the
> different witnesses. (There is NO aparatus for this verse in NA27, 
> in other
> words, also no discussion in Metzger's TCGNT)
> 
> I realize, as I stated above, that there's a theological issue with 
> this.
> Please, in the spirit of the list's purpose, I'm only looking for a
> linguistic perspective. Is that punctuation debatable? Or not?
> 
> Thanks,
> Peter Hamm
> Greek Newbie
_____________________

TEXT
APEKRIQH IHSOUS, OUTE hOUTOS hHMARTEN OUTE GONEIS AUTOU, ALL' hINA
FANERWQHi TA ERGA TOU QEOU EN AUTWi

I'm not sure how you would intend to take this with the succeeding verse
in light of the fact that the preceeding verse similarly has a hINA
clause in the question 

KAI HRWTHSAN AUTON hOI MAQHTAI AUTOU LEGONTES, hRABBI, TIS hHMARTEN,
hOUTOW H hOI GONEIS AUTOU, *** hINA TUFLOS GENNHQHi *** ? 

He responds to a question regarding the result (of supposed sin) with an
answer regarding the purpose of God.

george
gfsomsel
___________


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