[B-Greek] John 9:3 punctuation question

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Mar 7 15:50:22 EST 2005


Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that there are more such
elliptical hINA clauses in John's gospel, so I started a search for hINA
clauses in John and found two similar items quickly; there may be more, but
it seems to me that these two are ample to show the such clauses are indeed
used elliptically by this author:

Jn 1:8 (re John the Baptist): OUK HN EKEINOS TO FWS, ALL' hINA MARTURHSHi
PERI TOU FWTOS. "HE was NOT the Light, but (he came) to testify regarding
the Light."

Jn 1:22 (envoys from Jerusalem to John the Baptist): EIPAN OUN AUTWi: TIS
EI? hINA APOKRISIN DWMEN TOIS PEMYASIN hHMAS. "So they said to him, 'Who
are you?' (we need to know) so we can answer to those who sent us."

Jn 11:4 (Jesus re Lazarus) hAUTH hH ASQENEIA OUK ESTIN PROS QANATON ALL'
hUPER THS DOXHS TOU QEOU, hINA DOXASQHi hO hUIOS TOU QEOU DI' AUTHS. "This
illness is not fatal; it's for God's glory, for God's Son to be glorified
through it." The hINA clause here does expand the predicate adverbial
phrase hUPER THS DOXHS TOU QEOU, and yet it's still not a purpose clause
that clearly hangs upon an explicit verb or verbal phrase; rather we must
(and readily do) assume that the sense is: "This man is not dying just to
die; rather it's a matter of God's glory: he is in this state so that God's
son may be glorified/revealed through his deathly illsness."

Curious, isn't it, that we ordinarily find John's gospel such easy Greek to
read along in that we can get taken aback occasionally when we think we
know what the text means but can't quite figure out how the Greek text
means what we know it means.

At 11:38 AM -0500 3/7/05, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>At 11:10 AM -0500 3/7/05, Peter Hamm wrote:
>>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?
>
>There really is no problem with the text; the problem, so far as I can see,
>is that the phrasing is rather elliptical. The question posed by Jesus'
>disciples in 9:2 (TIS hHMARTEN, hOUTOS H hOI GONEIS AUTOU, hINA TUFLOS
>GENNHQHi?) implies that there must be some reason why the man was born
>blind; the disciples assume that it must be a consequence of the man's own
>sin or of his parents' sin, but the implicit question, especially as Jesus
>reframes it, is "Why was this man born blind?" and Jesus answers THAT
>question, "so that Gods deeds might become manifest in him."
>
>I would disagree with the notion expressed in the commentaries you refer
>to, although I obviously don't know what they are or exactly what they say.
>I really think that this hINA-clause must depend upon an implicit
>understanding of verse 2: "This man was born blind: why?"
>--
-- 

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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