[B-Greek] John 3:19 strange word order?
Bert de Haan
dehaanaf at gmail.com
Wed Aug 22 19:54:01 EDT 2007
Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Aug 21 06:24:27 EDT 2007
< Well,PONHRA is clearly predicative. If there's anything strange about
this word-order (and the text as it stands certainly doesn't seem
unintelligible), it's the "fronted" HN ; a form of EIMI is ordinarily
fronted when it bears an existential sense rather than a copulative
sense as here.
=========
(BdH) Exactly. That was my main problem. (The additional issue of
πονηρά PONHRA between αὐτῶν AUTWN and τὰ ἔργα TA ERGA came close to
making this verse unintelligible for me.)
=========
(cwc)
I do think one might more likely expect: HN GAR PONHRA
TA ERGA AUTWN or PONHRA GAR HN TA ERGA AUTWN. The effect of the word-
order as it stands in the Johannine text is something like, "Theirs,
after all, were evil -- their works, that is."
==========
(BdH)
That is very helpfull. Thank you.
Bert de Haan.
P.S. I set up a gmail account and I can read the unicode now.
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list