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

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Wed Oct 26 09:59:06 EDT 2005


On Oct 26, 2005, at 9:21 AM, CHARLES CLAYTON wrote:

> 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 FAINEI.   
> 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.
>
> Any edifying thoughts for me?

Don't know about edification, but a thought (or two) nonetheless. I  
personally think that the antecedent of hO\ here is the entire  
preceding clause PALIN ENTOLHN KAINHN GRAFW hUMIN, which I would  
render more or less idiomatically as "On the other hand it really is  
a new commandment that I am inscribing for you." This is a valid  
statement, the author says, both as it refers to Christ and as it  
refers to the addressees, and then he gives the reason as what we  
might call the "eschatological paradigm-shift" -- which is to say  
that the new context in which everything must now be understood means  
that the old commandment is at the same time radically new.

Perhaps the "others" are thinking of the controversy over Eph 2:8 as  
to whether TOUTO refers back to PISTIS (for my part, I'm quite sure  
that it doesn't, but there are other opinions). I think that hO\ --  
the neuter relative pronoun nom. sg. -- could refer back to ENTOLHN  
alone if (and only if) it were linked to a neuter predicate noun;  
here it is not but it is rather a subject with ALHQES as predicate  
adjective. For my part I would agree with those who claim it cannot  
relate to ENTOLHN because of the gender difference. I haven't seen an  
undisputable instance where a neuter relative pronoun has a feminine  
antecedent -- although I am well aware that this has been argued by  
some.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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