[B-Greek] The combination of prepositional phrases - John 21:11

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Sun Nov 8 00:46:09 EST 2009


Further to the question of combining prepositional phrases, I have a different 
understanding of John 21:11 than the RSV and all subsequent English versions 
that depend more or less on the RSV.

The text is:

ἀνέβη οὖν Σίμων Πέτρος καὶ εἵλκυσεν τὸ δίκτυον εἰς τὴν γῆν

ANEBH OUN SIMWN PETROS KAI hEILKUSEN TO DIKTUON EIS THN GHN

So Simon Peter went up and dragged the net towards/onto the shore

One of the problems is ANABAINW. Of the 82 occurrences in the NT, about 42% have 
an EIS phrase as the destination, but most of these describe going up to 
Jerusalem or the temple there. About 26% have no explicit destination, but it is 
understood from context what it is. In several cases (12%) EK or APO is used to 
indicate where the movement starts off from (the destination is then implicit). 
In addition, there are a few cases with other prepositions like PROS, EPI and EN 
and a few location words like hWDE.

My suggestion is that the underlying structure would have a second EIS 
preposition as in:

ἀνέβη οὖν Σίμων Πέτρος [εἰς τὴν γῆν] καὶ εἵλκυσεν τὸ δίκτυον εἰς τὴν γῆν

ANEBH OUN SIMWN PETROS [EIS THN GHN] KAI hEILKUSEN TO DIKTUON EIS THN GHN

In this case, the two EIS phrases would be exactly identical, and that is both 
superfluous and bad style, so the first one is deleted and the two indicative 
verbs share the second one.

Another option for the writer might have been to use a present participle of 
hELKW rather than the indicative aorist. But John often prefers coordinated 
indicatives for participles, probably because of Semitic influence.

Another possible reason for keeping the second EIS phrase in v. 11 could be to 
focus on the net now being dragged onto land, when 7 fishermen could not pull it 
into the boat a few minutes earlier.

In any case, I do not consider it warranted by grammar or context to import the 
destination "boat" into v. 11 as RSV did. Trying to drag the net onto shore when 
standing in the boat makes no sense. If he was already on the shore, then why 
enter the boat? And it would be physically impossible for one person to pull it 
into the boat considering the weight of the net and the fish. The LB restatement 
of the KJV has a frantic attempt of making sense out of it by changing "went up" 
to "went out", but going out into the water from land is KATABAINW.

Of course, I realize that people make these frantic efforts because they assume 
that Peter swam to shore even though verses 7-10 do not say or imply that he 
did. How you interpret one verse to a large extent determines how you interpret 
the following verses. For instance, NIV erroneously renders HLQON in v. 8 as 
"followed".

Any comments?

Iver Larsen




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