[B-Greek] Definiteness

Sean Kasabuske alethinon61 at milwpc.com
Wed Oct 11 14:49:35 EDT 2006


Brian
"Thank you. I found your response helpful and take your point."

Sean
You're welcome, and thanks for engaging in this dialogue with me.  I'm 
curious though, do you believe that the translations of the PN-V's below are 
mistranslations, or do they accurately convey the sense of the underlying 
Greek?  If you don't believe that they accurately convey the sense of the 
underlying Greek, then on what do you base that understanding?

4:19 "Sir, I see that you are _a prophet_" (NRSV)
6:70 "one of you is _a devil_" (NRSV)
8:34 "everyone who commits sin is _a slave_ to sin" (NRSV)
8:44 "He was _a murderer_ from the beginning" (NRSV)
8:44 "for he is _a liar_ and the father of lies" (NRSV)
8:48 "you are _a Samaritan_" (NRSV)
9:17 "He is _a prophet_" (NRSV)
9:24 "this man is _a sinner_" (NRSV)
9:25 "he is _a sinner_" (NRSV)
10:1 "anyone who. climbs in by another way is _a thief_" (NRSV)
10:13 "_a hired hand_ does not care for the sheep" (NRSV)
12:6 "he was _a theif_" (NRSV)
18:35 "I am not _a Jew_, am I?" (NRSV)
18:37a "So are you _a king_? (NRSV)
18:37b "You say that I am _a king_." (NRSV)

Thanks,
Sean Kasabuske

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian Abasciano" <bvabasciano at gmail.com>
To: "Sean Kasabuske" <alethinon61 at milwpc.com>; <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 10:39 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Definiteness


> Sean,
>
> Thank you. I found your response helpful and take your point.
>
> God bless,
>
> Brian Abasciano
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Sean Kasabuske" <alethinon61 at milwpc.com>
> To: "Brian Abasciano" <bvabasciano at gmail.com>; <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 6:48 AM
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Definiteness
>
>
>> Brian
>> "I think an important point that Wallace makes that may deserve attention 
>> is
>> that the two major studies (apparently three if you count Colwell himself 
>> on
>> some level) on this found no indefinite anarthrous pre-verbal nouns. It 
>> may
>> be determined by context, but if the scholars giving focused attention to
>> the issue find no examples of indefinites (apparently based on their
>> assessment of context inter alia), then that is strong evidence for
>> Wallace's rule, at least as a pragmatic observation of actual usage. I
>> suppose this raises all sorts of disagreements about how to best approach
>> grammar, formulating rules, etc., but for those who think there is at 
>> least
>> some value in usage based grammatical "rules" or whatever one wants to 
>> call
>> them, this may weigh heavily in favor of a general stance of approaching
>> such PN's in accordance with Wallace's "general rule"."
>>
>> Sean
>> I wish I had more time to respond to this question fully, but my schedule
>> this week is cramped. Here are some of the observations I've made:
>>
>> Colwell: The only thing we really learned from the Colwell years is how 
>> eager
>> theologians are to find support for their presuppositions, and how sloppy
>> some can be in their research. Some of the biggest names in the 
>> theological
>> business, including Bruce Metzger and William Barclay, used Colwell's 
>> Rule
>> to dismiss "a god" as a valid translation alternative. Yet surely these 
>> men
>> saw the many PN-V's in John that are typically translated into English 
>> with
>> the indefinite article, didn't they? They must have been aware of them. 
>> So
>> how can we account for the fact that they asserted that an indefinite
>> translation is wrong based on a rule that was being misapplied? I suspect
>> that they didn't actually read Colwell's article themselves, but merely
>> assumed that it settled matters because people they trusted claimed that 
>> it
>> settled matters. What the Colwell fiasco taught us is that we should not 
>> put
>> 'scholars' on some pedestal as though they don't put their pants on one 
>> leg
>> at a time like the rest of us. They are people who have presuppositions 
>> and
>> can make embarrassing mistakes, and if we follow them blindly we may
>> ultimately share their embarrassment.
>>
>> Harner: We learned two valuable things from Harner, (i) a definite QEOS 
>> at
>> John 1:1c would equate the LOGOS with hO QEOS, which leads to modalism 
>> (or
>> metaphor), and (ii) that PN-V's can be used to highlight the nature of 
>> the
>> subject. What Harner apparently assumed and didn't prove, is that 
>> indefinite
>> nouns are not a valid tool for highlighting a subject's nature. Harner 
>> was
>> wrong in this, for indefinite nouns can be used to highlight nature and 
>> they
>> often are. I shared this example last month:
>>
>> Illustration: A man committed adultery and immediately regretted it. He
>> approached his minister and confessed his sin. In the throes of his shame
>> and despair over his egregious act he cried out, "I don't know how I 
>> could
>> have done such a thing". His minister replied, "You failed because you 
>> are a
>> sinner, my son, just as I am".
>>
>> In context, his minister was not simply placing him in some generic 
>> category
>> of sinners as a purely factual statement that he belonged to said 
>> category.
>> No, he was telling him that he failed because he, like the rest of us, is
>> sinful "by nature" as a result of being born from Adam. The minister 
>> could
>> have used an adjective and said, "you failed because you are sinful", but 
>> he
>> chose instead to employ another tool: an indefinite noun.
>>
>> Harner noted that when an anarthrous noun is placed before the verb
>> qualitativeness becomes "more important" then whether the noun is 
>> definite
>> or indefinite, so that the noun's sense is "primarily" qualitative. 
>> Notice
>> that he doesn't say that the noun is not definite or indefinite, but that
>> qualitativeness is "more important" then whether it is definite or
>> indefinite. In the above example, "sinner" fits this description. In 
>> context
>> it is the man's sinful nature that the minister is focusing on, and so 
>> this
>> qualitativeness is "more important" then whether "a sinner" is definite 
>> or
>> indefinite. Yet, that doesn't change the fact that "a sinner" is 
>> indefinite.
>>
>> Dixon: Paul's thesis did an excellent job of demonstrating the problems 
>> with
>> Colwell's Rule and the misapplication of it. He also observed that any 
>> noun
>> that is not definite is "technically" indefinite (see p. 9 of his 
>> thesis).
>> But he separates the indefinite nouns that are used qualitatively from 
>> the
>> other indefinite nouns "for expediency" (again, see p. 9), and proceeds 
>> under the assumption
>> that definite, indefinite, and qualitative are exclusive categories. 
>> Clearly
>> he and Wallace are not in agreement on this crucial point.
>>
>> I question Dixon's approach because the assumption that D, Q, & I are
>> exclusive categories is not developed or substantiated, yet it is the 
>> very
>> basis for claiming that certain PN-V's are not indefinite. According to 
>> Dixon, there
>> is only one lonely indefinite noun in all of John's Gospel, and I find 
>> that
>> rather difficult to believe. Note the following PN-V's from John (I
>> apologize that I didn't have time to include the greek):
>>
>> 4:19 "Sir, I see that you are _a prophet_" (NRSV)
>> 6:70 "one of you is _a devil_" (NRSV)
>> 8:34 "everyone who commits sin is _a slave_ to sin" (NRSV)
>> 8:44 "He was _a murderer_ from the beginning" (NRSV)
>> 8:44 "for he is _a liar_ and the father of lies" (NRSV)
>> 8:48 "you are _a Samaritan_" (NRSV)
>> 9:17 "He is _a prophet_" (NRSV)
>> 9:24 "this man is _a sinner_" (NRSV)
>> 9:25 "he is _a sinner_" (NRSV)
>> 10:1 "anyone who. climbs in by another way is _a thief_" (NRSV)
>> 10:13 "_a hired hand_ does not care for the sheep" (NRSV)
>> 12:6 "he was _a theif_" (NRSV)
>> 18:35 "I am not _a Jew_, am I?" (NRSV)
>> 18:37a "So are you _a king_? (NRSV)
>> 18:37b "You say that I am _a king_." (NRSV)
>>
>> According to Dixon, none of the above PN-V's are indefinite!  If you find
>> such a position compelling, then can you explain precisely why the above
>> translations don't accurately convey the sense of the underlying Greek?
>> According to what demonstrably valid analytical process will you test 
>> your
>> conclusion to verify it's correctness?
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Sean Kasabuske
>>
>>
>
> 





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