[B-Greek] him which is, and which was, and which is to come
craig
newsgroupstuff at people.net.au
Mon Nov 21 14:50:16 EST 2005
> I would still call APO hO WN a solecism; even if hO WN is perfectly
> normal Greek, APO hO WN is, as I said earlier, intelligible but not
> grammatical Greek. I suggested that it was rather comparable to
> writing in English: "You have in your hands a letter from I." While
> "It's me" has become standard spoken idiom in American English and
> the now archaic "It is I" will earn the speaker jeers, catcalls or
> skewed glances, we still can't say "a letter from I" even if it is
> perfectly intelligible.
>
> Now the question is whether the author of Revelation consciously and
> deliberately violated rules of Greek grammar that he well understood
> when he wrote APO hO WN KAI hO HN KAI hO ERCOMENOS. I do think that
> he wrote this phrase deliberately in this manner; I think he
> probably
> was aware that it wasn't grammatically "approved." But it is
> intellgible and forceful in its rhetorical expression. Actually the
> usage of ERCOMENOS as a FUTURE participle is questionable too as
> Greek idiom, but I would guess this is governed by the expression in
> OT eschatological texts using Hebrew HaBBa or the like.
Yes, the stark use of nominative with APO seems too deliberate. It makes it
seem like hO WN KAI hO HN KAI hO ERCOMENOS is a kind of title or well-known
forumula, and so indeclinable. Yet not so strict as to not feel free to
rearrange the order of verbs elsewhere in Revelation.
You almost expect to find an exact quote in LXX, but I don't think it is
there.
I think Carl's reference to Exodus 3:14 is best. Whether John is coining the
phrase, or whether it is in common use already, it seems to be an allusion
and perhaps an expansion on Exodus 3:14. Perhaps the first usage in 1:4
especially begins with hO WN to key the reader into Exodus 3:14.
FWIW
--
Craig Johnson
Brisbane, Australia
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