[B-Greek] Basic Dictionary Work in John 1

Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
Mon Apr 28 22:26:46 EDT 2008


Hi Jonathan,

Do you speak any foreign language fluently? If so, you probably realize 
that trying to reason logically about prepositions in a language is a 
risky enterprise. What BDAG allows you to do (and yes, get the newer 
BDAG instead of the older BADG) is see the basic usages together with a 
list of the most significant places where they appear, and that's 
precisely what you don't have access to when you don't have the tools. I 
think it's really great that some of the list members here have shared 
things they have learned by using these tools.

Honestly, I thought Mark's post was very insightful, and it's precisely 
the kind of argument that carries weight - looking at parallel passages 
that show meaning that must be there. The passage in Acts, along with 
many others, show that "with" is a primary meaning. Harold gave you a 
list of other passages that illustrate this meaning.

It's quite likely that the author did choose words carefully, and that 
pros was the best word for what the author meant to convey. But that 
begs the question - what did pros mean to the author? The only good way 
to find that out is to look carefully at many uses of the word, and see 
what meanings we can show the word had in those contexts.

I'm not sure if you have a precise, testable notion in mind when you say 
"you'd think some kind of vestigial connotation of basic meaning would 
stick in the mind of the Greek doing the writing", but if you do, you 
could use these tools to test that theory. But I'm not sure which 
meaning of pros would be the basic one, and that's especially hard to 
argue with prepositions.

Take "on". If I say I wrote an article on prepositions, do you think 
that there is a vestigial meaning in my mind so that I picture an 
article sitting on top of some prepositions? Or if I say I put something 
a plate the table, does the vestigial meaning "about" stick in my mind 
so that I think that the plate is about the table? If I say the picnic 
is still on even if is raining, does a vestigial meaning from one of 
those other two uses color my meaning? Is there a relationship between 
adjectival uses of the word on and adverbial ones like "turn the light 
on" (as opposed to off), "we rode on into the sunset" (note the implied 
forward motion), or "get a load on"? As a native speaker of English, I 
suspect you have a better intuition for English than any of us can ever 
have for Greek, so I suggest you start by sharpening your hypothesis of 
what you mean by such a vestigial connotation of basic meaning and show 
how that works for some common English prepositions before assuming it 
applies to Greek ones.

I'm skeptical that you'll find this to be true if you spend the time to 
examine it. My experience with prepositions in modern languages 
convinces me that they were invented so that native speakers can laugh 
at people learning their language. They are subtle and slippery. I wish 
there were a few native speakers of New Testament Greek who could read 
our lists, laugh at us, and gently teach us. I'm afraid the best you and 
I can do is read as much Greek as we can, learn from the books, rely on 
some of the people here who really know their stuff, use the tools, and 
try to get a feeling for what kinds of reasoning about language works in 
those languages we already know so we have a better intuition for how to 
reason about other languages we do not yet know.

Blessings to you!

Jonathan

Jonathan Bailey wrote:
> Well seeing as I don't have Bibleworks here I can't really do the word study, but I'd say that the verse you gave doesn't discount any unusual meaning to the preposition. Actually, we see that Ananias died three hours before Sapphira was and they were buried at separate times. This just strikes me as possibly allowing for the directional nuances of pros to shine through. He was buried and then when she died they took her body to(ward) his location to be buried. Again, I have no access to Bibleworks, BAGD, or commentaries, so I really can't check anything out or ponder anything on my own right now. Also, Wallace says pros is commonly used as 'with' when paired with a stative verb, but I have no idea how often this occurs, and have no idea whether pros is actually preferred in these cases or not over other prepositions. I know the verbal category can override the force of the preposition, but you'd think some kind of vestigial connotation of basic meaning would stick in the mind of the Greek doing the writing, at least enough to cause him to choose a particular preposition over another, except in the cases of very tightly grammaticalized idiomatic statements. I do not think John 1:2 would fall into this category. We can only hope that the author of John 1:2 was serious about what he was saying and was choosing his words carefully and decided that pros was the best preposition to use here.
>  
> I hate to possibly be reinforcing my position as an idiot by speculating about these things really without any of the necessary tools at my disposal to do so. However, the banana is just a banana answer is one of conservatism that might cause us to overlook something. So while it is quite likely that nothing is out there that has managed to convince the majority of scholars that this preposition can shed light on some Trinitarian or Christological issue (if there were something, I would assume it would be common knowledge), for my own edification I was hoping to get some specific information about usage of this preposition in general and in John 1:2. And though I am flirting with the parameters of discussion on this list by asking about linguistic factors in exegesis, I would even be interested in minority views about the usage of the preposition here or offlist responses about exegesis that people have done based on the language in the phrase. But it seems we might just have to lighten up on our reading until we get all the books and programs we need in place. Sad, though, as the opening verses of John are pretty juicy words for exegesis.
>  
> Regards,
>  
> Jon
>
>
> Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:42:06 -0700From: lightmanmark at yahoo.comSubject: Re: [B-Greek] Basic Dictionary Work in John 1To: baileyjn at hotmail.com; b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org; brian_d_fink at hotmail.com
> Jon,
>  
> May God bless you in your efforts and we will pray for your
> safety.  As far as PROS TON THEON in 1:2 goes, I am sure
> that there are all sorts of deep theological significance here but
> I remember very well when I first read Acts 5:10 and noticed
> where Sapphira is buried "with her husband" you have the
> same use of PROS with the accusative in a very
> non-theological context.  I remember thinking, maybe 
> "with God" means "with God."  As Freud said, sometimes
> a banana is just a banana.  But keep on asking these
> questions.
>  
> Mark Lightman 
>  Jonathan Bailey <baileyjn at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Dear List,I am here in Iraq and have a friend who has just recently completed his first year of Greek at an Orthodox seminary. I'm Protestant and going to Liberty Baptist Seminary through distance learning. I've been teaching myself Greek since 1996 but there has been much learning, forgetting, and relearning going on. I guess I'd call myself intermediate. Anyway, we have never really done any serious Greek exegesis other than what we have read in commentaries. Anyway, we we have decided to slowly read through John together. Our last assignment was John 1:1-4 (we are just starting).I have Wallace here, but not BAGD. I am basically using a GNT on my pocket PC and have very limited resources. I was thinking of basically using the list to ask some very basic questions that I could probably answer myself if I had more tools, thinking maybe the list would have someone who was excited about some of the theological ramifications of the Greek that we are going to run across. So I am going to write this mail to the list and see if there are any bites.The most interesting thing about John 1:1-4 is the prepositions. Unfortunately, Wallace pretty much assumes you have BAGD in front of you and only gives short definitions followed by in-depth commentary on texts using the prepositions. So I though I would see what people on the list could add to our understanding.Truly the most striking feature of our text is the use of PROS in 1:2 instead of META, PARA, or another preposition translated as 'with'. Also, I generally find EN is often used in connection with means, but you have DIA in 1:3, which tends to have a more spacial dimension in a lot of cases. Is there anything unusual about the use of prepositions here? Of course these verses are of crucial importance to any given number of christological and trinitarian discussions. I was wondering if there has been a lot of theological significance attached to the use of prepositions here.Also, keep in mind that I do not have Bibleworks here so have not done any real word studies of usages to confirm or deny my general understanding. So basically I was just wondering if anyone was interesting in helping us out until we can get more of our own resources. I'd love to hear what anyone has to say about the use of the prepositions mentioned above as they stand in our text.Regards,Jon_________________________________________________________________Back to work after baby–how do you know when you’re ready?http://lifestyle.msn.com/familyandparenting/articleNW.aspx?cp-documentid=5797498&ocid=T067MSN40A0701A---B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreekB-Greek mailing listB-Greek at lists.ibiblio.orghttp://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
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