[B-Greek] Neuter Pronoun 1 John 2:8

Harold R. Holmyard III hholmyard at ont.com
Wed Oct 26 09:41:26 EDT 2005


Dear Charles,

>In 1 John 2:8 the author writes hO ESTIN ALHQES EN AUTW KAI EN hUMIN 
>hOTI hH SKOTIA PARAGETAI KAI TO FWS TO ALHQINON HDH QAINEI.  To what 
>does the hO refer?  One author had the unique approach (at least to 
>me) of saying that hO was a postcedent and it related to all the 
>phrase following hOTI because hOTI is considered to take a neuter 
>nominative article. Most everyone else said that it related to the 
>precedent clause (PALIN ENTOLHN KAINHN GRAFW hUMIN).  But the 
>difficult part for me was that some said it could not relate to 
>ENTOLHN because it was feminine and others said even though it was 
>feminine it still related to it because sometimes the neuter would 
>do this.

HH: I think the majority is right, and the neuter can take a compound 
or complex idea as its antecedent. I am just guessing, but it seems 
that complexity could arise if John were referring to the content of 
the command more than just the command itself. Loving one another as 
Jesus loved us (John 13:34) is something that is true in us because 
of new covenant realities such as the indwelling Spirit and the 
example of Jesus.

Wallace, in Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (p 337), notes: "Not 
infrequently relative pronouns do not follow the basic rules of 
agreement. Sometimes the gender of the relative pronoun does not 
match that of the antecedent, usually because of sense agreement 
superceding syntactical agreement (constructio ad sensum)."

					Yours,
					Harold Holmyard




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