[B-Greek] John 3:16 "so"

Harold Holmyard hholmyard3 at earthlink.net
Tue Dec 15 17:54:15 EST 2009


Dear list,
I have been studying a controversy in John 3:16:

*

John 3:16*  οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν υἱὸν τὸν 
μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν, ἵνα πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν μὴ ἀπόληται ἀλλ᾽ ἔχῃ ζωὴν 
αἰώνιον.

hOUTWS GAP HGAPHSEN hO QEOS TON KOSMON, hWSTE TON hUION TON MONOGENH 
EDWKEN, hINA PAS hO PISTEUWN EIS AUTON MH APOLHTAI ALL' ECHi ZWHN AIWNION.

The controversy concerns the force of hOUTWS and then hWSTE. The 
lexicons present, though not necessarily for this verse, the claim that 
the words together can imply an intensive idea where hOUTWS is "so" ("so 
much") and hWSTE is "that." The use of "so" and "that" is, of course, 
the traditional rendering of the verse. Some recent commentaries, 
papers, and translations are saying that hOUTWS should be translated "in 
this way," with hWSTE possibly rendered as "and so."

This particular construction does not appear elsewhere in the Greek NT 
from what I have read, or really in the LXX either. So recourse is made 
to writers like Josephus, Philo, Demosthenes, and Epictetus to clarify 
the usage. The Loeb Classical Library often translates the construction 
with an intensive sense, but a paper I just read differed with LCL, 
claiming that in each case hOUTWS looked back to a previous context and 
had the meaning "in this way," rather than being an intensive "so."

Is anyone familiar with this issue sufficiently to have an opinion about it?

By the way, please tell me if the Greek text is legible as Greek. I 
exported John 3:16 from Bibleworks to Word and transferred it from Word 
to the emailer Thunderbird. It still looks Greek to me but perhaps not 
to others.

Thank you.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard








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