[B-Greek] EINAI TON CRISTON IHSOUN, Act 18:5

Webb Mealy webb at selftest.net
Tue Nov 13 21:12:35 EST 2007


Dear Monk James,

 

I wrote:

> hO CRISTOS functions not just as a title, like
> "king", but also as the name/descriptor for a mysterious 
> personage that Jews
> believe in, but whose human identity they don't know. So it's 
> not so much
> like saying, "Jesus is king" as like saying, "Bruce Wayne is 
> Batman". The
> latter can be reversed: "Batman is Bruce Wayne!" but the former 
> cannot.

 

You asked, "Why not?"


Here's a stab at it from a non-expert's vantage point: 

 

You can't say "king is Jesus", because when it is not being used as a title,
it reverts to being an indefinite noun, and under usual circumstances
predicate noms can't be more definite (i.e. represent a more restricted set
of referents) than their subjects. This is shown by the fact that the
reverse statement becomes possible when we recast it as "the king is Jesus".
The assumption here is that there is only one Jesus, and there is only one
"the king". "The king" has become definite enough to be able to handle
"Jesus" as a predicate nom. Take away the definiteness, and once again it
doesn't work: "a king is Jesus". I can't say that these principles work for
all possible languages, but I think they underlie the way English and Greek
are both conceptually structured. The indefinite noun, by the way, can serve
as subject of a N. + V. + Pred. Nom. statement as long as the pred. nom. is
equally or more indefinite: "a king is a man" and "a king is a monarch" are
ok, but "a king is an eighteenth-century English king" is not ok. I guess
that means that the normal rules for statements of identity is that you
can't (unless you're being paradoxical) affirm that a set is identical to a
subset of itself. "Pain is sensation" is non-paradoxical; "sensation is
pain" is paradoxical.

 

None of this solves the problem at hand; the most it does is call into
question for me Carl's explanation for why he prefers Jesus as the subject
and Christ/Messiah as the pred. nom. of the statement, "EINAI TON CRISTON
IHSOUN". He says,

 

TON CRISTON is a title while IHSOUN is an individual person.

 

To the imagination most first-century Jews, the Messiah was single personage
who was now hidden (either in the mysterious heavenly realm of God or on
earth in someone's loins), a person who would "appear" at the right time. A
little like Batman, people considered it common knowledge that Messiah
existed; what they didn't know was what individual historical character-if
any-he would someday reveal himself to be. So CRISTOS is not like the
indefinite noun "king". It's more like "the Great King". In the popular
imagination (excepting the Essenes!) it refers to one personage, and so is
definite enough in principle to serve as the subject of the infinitive in
our statements in Acts 18:5 and 25. None of this indicates that I prefer TON
CRISTON as the subject-I would just like some satisfying way of describing
why it is the less-likely of the two interpretive options.

 

Webb Mealy

 

-----Original Message-----
From: frjsilver at optonline.net [mailto:frjsilver at optonline.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 4:37 PM
To: Webb Mealy
Cc: 'Carl Conrad'; 'Elizabeth Kline'; 'greek B-Greek'
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] EINAI TON CRISTON IHSOUN, Act 18:5

 

Please explain why not.

Thanks!

Father James

----- Original Message -----
From: Webb Mealy 
Date: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 5:25 pm
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] EINAI TON CRISTON IHSOUN, Act 18:5
To: 'Carl Conrad' , 'Elizabeth Kline' 
Cc: 'greek B-Greek' 

> To complicate matters, hO CRISTOS functions not just as a title, like
> "king", but also as the name/descriptor for a mysterious 
> personage that Jews
> believe in, but whose human identity they don't know. So it's 
> not so much
> like saying, "Jesus is king" as like saying, "Bruce Wayne is 
> Batman". The
> latter can be reversed: "Batman is Bruce Wayne!" but the former 
> cannot.
> Webb Mealy
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Carl Conrad
> Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 1:35 PM
> To: Elizabeth Kline
> Cc: greek B-Greek
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] EINAI TON CRISTON IHSOUN, Act 18:5
> 
> 
> On Nov 13, 2007, at 5:52 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:
> 
> > I have the e-text of Wallace, but after reading through it, I really
> > don't think what he says is conclusive; it seems to me that he's
> > reasonably honest here in recognizing that the choice between
> > alternative ways of understanding the Greek in these passages 
> may be
> > subjective or arbitrary rather than clearly resolved by 
> unquestionable> criteria. My own subjective choice is "that 
> Jesus is the Christ" --
> > and I guess the criterion I prefer to go with is that the predicate
> > term is the one marked by the article. "Ya pays yer money and 
> ya takes
> > yer choice."
> 
> 
> I repent me (somewhat); the choice may be subjective, but I'll 
> stick 
> with it; what I'd change is my reason for making the choice: it 
> is 
> that TON CRISTON is a title while IHSOUN is an individual person.
> 
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> cwconrad at ioa.com or cwconrad2 at mac.com
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
> 
> 
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