[B-Greek] John 6:33, 35
emmanuel.le4
emmanuel.le4 at wanadoo.fr
Fri Mar 25 02:47:46 EST 2005
Thanks, that was a helpful reminder. It is easy to get lost in
technicalities, and to forget the most important side of studying God's word
which is MEDITATION.
Emmanuel Durand
Ferney-Voltaire
France
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
To: "emmanuel.le4" <emmanuel_le4 at hotmail.com>
Cc: <B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org>; "emmanuel.le4" <emmanuel.le4 at wanadoo.fr>
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 12:12 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] John 6:33, 35
> At 9:46 AM +0100 3/24/05, emmanuel.le4 wrote:
> >Hi! I'm going through the bread of life discourse (John 6) at the moment
> >and was asking myself a few questions. Which I now ask you. Sorry if
these
> >have already been asked in the past, just give me the references in the
> >archives then.
> >
> >In v 33: hO ARTOS TOU QEOU what is the Genitive? Does it mean that God is
> >the source or origin of the bread (which could fit the context, because
> >this bread comes down from heaven)? Or is it a possessive genitive? What
> >are the other possibilities?
> >
> >In v 35: hO ARTOS THS ZWHS. Same question: does the genitive point toward
> >production: the bread that produces life? are there any other
> >possibilities?
> >In that same phrase, what is the significance of the article? Is it used
> >to show the uniqueness of that bread (monadic)? Or is it "par
excellence"?
>
> Although the grammars like to set out half a dozen subcategories of the
> genitive dependent upon a noun, the fact is that there is no distinction
> whatsoever in the Greek between these so-called subcategories; the
> subcategories are attempts to sort out the kinds of usage that might be
> represented in translation. What the noun in the genitive actually does
> with regard to the noun it depends upon is the same thing that an
adjective
> does to a noun: it adds specificity to it: hO ARTOS TOU QEOU = "God-kind
> bread" or "God-bread" and hO ARTOS THS ZWHS = "life-type bread" or
> "life-bread." The Greek phrases tell you no more than that and a really
> LITERAL translation would yield no more clarity than those English
> equivalents. That is to say that you have to read the author's intent from
> the context alone.
>
> It might be worth while to think through the variety of possible senses to
> these phrases: hO ARTOS TOU QEOU might mean "bread that comes from God" or
> "bread that belongs to God" or even "bread that IS or CONTAINS God" or
> "bread that gives the eater ACCESS TO God." One might do well to consider
> ALL these possibilities.
>
> It is the context of the entire bread discourse that will offer whatever
> clarity you may gain over the sense of these phrases. One general aspect
of
> these Johannine discourses of Jesus is that they tend to offer meditations
> on the range of meanings of a powerful metaphor. In the present discourse,
> I think that the most helpful methodology would be to suppose that the
> "bread" in each of these expressions is Jesus himself and that the various
> genitives attached to ARTOS are employed to explore the relationship of
> Jesus to God and to those to whom the bread is given; I really do not
think
> that determining which subcategory of adnominal genitive in which any one
> of these adnominal genitives may be pigeonholed can assist the
> understanding. Moreover, it seems to me that in a Johannine discourse, it
> might even be better to think of HOW MANY different senses are suggested
by
> each of the adnominal genitives: these discourses do not seem intended to
> provide the reader/listener with precise information about the "bread" so
> much as to invite the reader/listener to MEDITATE upon the depth and
> breadth of meanings that "bread" may bear as a cipher for Jesus himself.
> --
>
> 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/
>
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list