[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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