[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
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