[B-Greek] Auton in Jn. 6:44

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Sep 22 05:58:19 EDT 2009


On Sep 22, 2009, at 12:43 AM, David Koot wrote:

> This question has come up a number of times, and in researching I  
> still am not clear.  Oudeis appears to be the subject, the verse is  
> a Greek conditional sentence.  What is the antecedent of auton?   
> What is the referent noun?  I had posted this question a few days,  
> but realized that I had originally signed up to the mailing list  
> under a different email addy, so wasn't sure if my post made it the  
> first time!

I don't recall seeing this question before, and a quick search of the  
archives didn't bring up anything either.

We ordinarily like to have the text in question before our eyes to  
help us think about an issue:

John 6:44 οὐδεὶς δύναται ἐλθεῖν πρός με  
ἐὰν μὴ ὁ πατὴρ ὁ πέμψας με ἑλκύσῃ  
αὐτόν, κἀγὼ ἀναστήσω αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ  
ἐσχάτῃ ἡμέρᾳ.
[OUDEIS DUNATAI ELQEIN PROS ME EAN MH hO PATHR hO PEMYAS ME hELKUSHi  
AUTON, KA)GW ANASTHSW AUTON EN THi ESCATHi hHMERAi.]

Yes, this is a general condition; in this instance the apodosis  
setting forth the universal result comes before the protasis, the  
generalizing proposition which must be true if the result is to obtain.

Logically OUDEIS DUNATAI  "not a person can ... " = OU DUNATAI TIS: "a  
person cannot ... "
Logically the condition "If the Father who sent me does not draw/ 
attract/incite a person, the person does not come ... "

So: yes, OUDEIS is the implicit antecedent of AUTON; the negation in  
OUDEIS really applies to the verb of the clause.
Academic linguists will likely offer a different kind of gobbledygook  
to explain this; in fact, they may do so in more than one framework.


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






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