[B-Greek] hINA in Jn 9:3, 11:4

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Wed Feb 4 19:01:37 EST 2009


On Feb 4, 2009, at 7:23 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:

> I did not read through the whole dissertation but rather looked at  
> several sections of it.

Carl,

I found it fairly easy to misconstrue M.Sim's conclusions about  
particular passages  which involve hINA clauses if I didn't keep her  
framework constantly before me, particularly section 2.2.2.6  
Procedural Markers (pages 46-48) where she explains her claim that   
hINA, hOTI, GAR, DE ...  as semantically empty procedural markers.  
This is more or less the key to her entire project.  If this aspect of  
her framework is momentarily set aside,  some of her musings on  
lexical semantics might appear to be somewhat arbitrary. When I went  
back and reviewed chapter 2 a lot of what she said later began to make  
sense.

She claims that hINA has no native lexical value, that unlike nouns,  
verbs, adjectives and prepositions, hINA does not   have a 'meaning'  
nor does it have any fixed logical function (telic, ecbatic).  The  
main function of hINA is to mark the following text as a  
'representation' of a thought, somewhat like the word "that" in english.

The fact that Sim takes particular positions in regard to  
interpretations of texts, for example, rejecting the telic  
understanding of the hINA clause in  Jn 9:3, 11:4, actually is a  
distraction from her main thrust. There is nothing about her notion of  
hINA as a procedural marker that would weigh against reading the hINA  
clause in Jn 9:3, 11:4 as telic, since according to her rules the  
telic aspect is an inference from the total context (textual,  
cultural, ...).

The irony of her reading on  Jn 9:3  (c.f. Jn11:4) is that IMHO  
Relevance Theory actually comes in as support for the telic reading of  
the hINA clause. Particularly in Jn 11:4, where everything about the  
death of Lazarus and Jesus words there cries out for a telic reading  
of hINA in Jn 11:4. It is worth noting that M. Sim does not cite  Jn  
11:4 in her thesis.


Elizabeth







More information about the B-Greek mailing list