[B-Greek] Was: "NWT: Is it..., " Becoming: "Wallace on Jn 1:1c" (ha)

Austin Alexander austinjalexander at gmail.com
Fri Feb 24 19:30:37 EST 2006


Mondo,

Three things:

First, while Wallace does make use of Countess, he appears to be using the
information to point out the inconsistencies of the NWT's translation of the
anarthrous QEOS -- Wallace does not, however, appear to be relying on
Countess for his understanding of the anarthrous QEOS.  Instead, Wallace
appears to rely on things like 1) places in John 1 where anarthrous nouns
are rendered definitely, and 2) information I will cover below.

Second, it is well known that folks like Wallace make no attempt to hide
their faith as they deal with Greek-related issues, and I am of the
persuasion that faith and biblical Greek have a fine time going hand in
hand.  Regardless, picking up the list from my last paragraph of what
Wallace relies on for his understanding of Jn. 1:1c, Wallace (while actually
stating that Dixon went a bit far) also appears to rely on 2) the fact that
"the indefinite notion is the most poorly attested for anarthrous pre-verbal
predicate nominatives."

Third, again, while Wallace is very open about his particular theological
stance, and although he refers to what you consider to be more
"apologetic"-type works, Wallace does appear to rely on both grammar (e.g.
when he states that his qualitative view on Jn. 1:1c relies upon the fact
that "the largest proportion of pre-verbal anarthrous predicate nominatives
fall into this category [i.e. qualitative]") and theology.  However, as far
as his reliance upon theology is concerned, I would argue that Wallace at
least thinks he is relying not so much on his own theology but on what he
perceives to be the author of the Gospel of John's theology, a wise move (in
my opinion) when attempting to deal with the translation and meaning of a
sentence contained in the Gospel of John.

Thus, I am still left with Wallace's short treatment of Jn. 1:1c as a
delightfully concise and helpful, albeit conservative evangelical, treatment
on the subject.

FWIW,

Austin
--
Austin J Alexander
Senior Undergraduate Religion Major
Charleston Southern University
SCBC BCM President/CSU BCM President
Desk Phone: 843-574-5859
Office Phone: 843-863-7192
Email: austinjalexander at gmail.com
Web Address: http://austinjalexander.tripod.com
Member of Summit Church (SBC)


> Message: 15
> Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 18:38:50 -0500
> From: "Mondo Pascal" <mondofive at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] NWT: Is it an accurate translation of the
>         Greek?
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <BAY7-F6AD7908F286E076F0B370B4F20 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
>
> Austin,
>
> I am not all that fond of Wallace's treatment of the subject due to his
> methodology.  On the indefinite rendering he first makes use of Countess,
> which is not a grammatical work, but an apologetic one.  Countess makes a
> number of errors that Wallace repeats, seemingly viewing the indefinite
> argument as based upon the simple lack of the article, thus meaning that
> all
> texts without the article should be indefinite.  This is not the argument
> and so it is truly a straw man.
>
> Wallace further makes use of Dixon's study, which if I remember correctly,
> also leaned heavily in the direction of an apologetic work, though that
> was
> in theory not his aim.  When one, knowingly or not, has one's work lean in
> an apologetic direction, the data that they come up with tends to be
> skewed.
>   It has been a while since I have read his study, but if memory serves me
> correctly, he discussed John 1:1 more than any other text.  This, to me
> anyway, demonstrates what he was looking to get at in his study.  Further
> though, his data was based on how he viewed the texts in view, which in
> itself makes the results questionable.
>
> Finally, on his view of the passage as qualitative, we find that he leans
> heavily on his own theology, especially when we consider what he discusses
> that the text means based upon various translations.
>
> So grammatically, I do not put a lot of confidence in his work on this
> text.
>   It was very much colored by his theology.
>
> Mondo Pascal
>



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