[B-Greek] John 3:35
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Jun 9 19:17:51 EDT 2006
On Jun 9, 2006, at 6:46 PM, Andy Kaylor wrote:
> hO PATHR AGAPAi TON hUION KAI PANTA DEDWKEN EN THi XEIRI AUTOU
>
> "The Father loves the Son and has given all (things) into his
> hands." My question is, and this is purely for the sake of
> understanding the grammar, could this be rendered as "The Father
> loves the Son and (loves) all (things) he has given into his
> hands"? That is, is it possible for PANTA to be a direct object of
> AGAPAi?
No, because your proposed translation implies a "that" or "which" as
the object of DEDWKEN; in the Greek, however, that relative pronoun
would of necessity be expressed as hA in a clause PANTA hA DEDWKEN EN
THi CEIRI AUTOU.
>
> Now I realize that the sentence wouldn't quite make sense in this
> way, but I'm trying to understand the grammar, so I just want to
> understand whether or not this would be possible. For instance, if
> instead of PANTA this had read PANTAS, could it have been
> translated as, "The Father loves the Son and all those he has given
> into his hands"? For that mattter, as it is could it be translated
> as, "The Father loves the Son and each one he has given into his
> hands"?
No, for the same reason: your sentence has an IMPLICIT relative
pronoun object of "has given" -- in the Greek that relative pronoun
would of necessity be EXPLICIT.
> As I try to think through this, it occurs to me that maybe DEDWKEN
> can't be subordinated to PANTA in the way I am asking, but I am
> very new to verbs (just finished the chapters on present active
> indicative) so I don't know what to look for here.
It's not a matter of verbs but of syntax.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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