[B-Greek] subject in Rev 1:1

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri Aug 15 06:21:24 EDT 2008


On Aug 13, 2008, at 3:09 PM, Beata Urbanek wrote:

> Dear List,
>
> Rev 1:1 says: APOKALUYIS IHSOU CRISTOU hHN EDWKEN AUTWi hO QEOS  
> DEIXAI TOIS DOULOIS AUTOU hA DEI GENESQAI EN TACEI KAI ESHMANEN  
> APOSTEILAS DIA TOU AGGELOU AUTOU TWi DOULWi AUTOU IWANNHi
>
>
> My question is: what is the subject of the verb ESHMANEN? Is it hO  
> QEOS because it is the nearest possible noun and in nominative? Or  
> is it Jesus Christ because APOKALUYIS was given to him and he can  
> give it to others? Consequently, whose AGGELOS is it?

On Aug 15, 2008, at 2:03 AM, John Sanders wrote:
> As to whom the AUTOU of the phrase AGGELOU AUTOU referrs, I think  
> that will
> be a function of the common understanding that the readers have in the
> relationship between IHSOUS and QEOS.  For my part, I did not and do  
> not
> think about the specificity of ANGELOS allocation, I just assume  
> that what
> is of IHSOUS is of QEOS and vice versa.  You may have other ideas, the
> grammar of the text will not be able to support one supposition from
> another.
>
> I apologize for the long and perhaps tedious accounting of my thought
> process, but I think that rather than attempting to go back over and  
> parse a
> sentence it is easier to develop, or at least to attempt to develop  
> some
> form of intuitive association of the parts of the sentence as I read  
> along.

Rev. 1:1 	Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἣν  
ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ ὁ θεὸς δεῖξαι τοῖς  
δούλοις αὐτοῦ ἃ δεῖ γενέσθαι ἐν  
τάχει, καὶ ἐσήμανεν ἀποστείλας διὰ  
τοῦ ἀγγέλου αὐτοῦ τῷ δούλῳ αὐτοῦ  
Ἰωάννῃ,

When I first saw Beata's question a couple days ago, I started to  
write out a response; halfway through that response I decided to abort  
it on grounds that there are no really satisfying -- wholly convincing  
-- reasons for establishing the exact subject of  the antecedents  
ἐσήμανεν ESHMANEN or the exact antecedent of any of the three  
genitive singular pronouns αὐτοῦ AUTOU. A more careful  
formulation by the author of this work might have obviated this  
ambiguity of WHO sent the revelation to WHOSE servants through the  
agency of WHOSE angel to WHOSE servant. I've read this opening  
sentence of Revelation countless times and often enough puzzled over  
who or what belonged to whom without ever coming to any satisfying  
resolution. Now it's occurred to me to attempt a reasonable analogical  
formulation:

"Here's the baseball bat that a father gave his son to show to his  
friends; he marked it before dispatching it through his courier to  
George, his secretary."

How much information does this sentence give about the persons  
involved in this "delivery"?

WHOSE friends were to see the baseball bat? Was it the father or the  
son who marked the bat and sent it off? WHOSE courier carried the bat  
to George? WHOSE secretary was George?

I think an ordinary reader may assume that the father wanted his SON's  
friends to see the bat, that it was the father who marked the bat and  
sent it off, that it was the father's courier who carried the bat to  
its destination, and that George was the father's secretary. We're not  
told, however, whether the son is a little boy or a forty-year-old  
baseball enthusiast who happens to be a business executive in a large  
firm. It would appear that neither author -- the one who penned the  
opening verse of Revelation or the one who wrote about the baseball  
bat -- has assimilated or applied the classic journalistic lesson  
about giving clear answers to the five "W" questions. And I think that  
John Sanders is right on target when he writes, "You may have other  
ideas; the grammar of the text will not be able to support one  
supposition from another."


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)




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