[B-Greek] John 2:15--PANTAS ... TA TE PROBATA AND TOUS BOAS
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Nov 17 07:59:09 EST 2010
I'm going to delete intervening parts of this confoundedly and confoundingly lengthy discourse
and cut to the chase. And I do not expect to be commenting further on this matter.
On Nov 17, 2010, at 6:57 AM, Leonard Jayawardena wrote:
>
> Actually, if you read only up to PANTAS (let's ignore the bit about the whip for the moment), its most logical antecedent is not even the merchants plus all the types of wares mentioned, including the doves and coins, but ONLY THE MERCHANTS, with the removal of their wares from the temple only implied as a natural consequence of Jesus putting out the merchants, since when they go out they take their wares out with them. Grammatically, there are really only two possibilities of understanding PANTAS EXEBALEN EK TOU hIEROU TA TE PROBATA KAI TOUS BOAS:
>
> A. He put all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen (my preference), in which case TA TE PROBATA KAI TOUS BOAS is in apposition to PANTAS; or
>
> B. TA TE PROBATA KAI TOUS BOAS is an addition to PANTAS and is translated "and the sheep and the oxen," as it is in the KJV, which is more idiomatically rendered in some such manner as 0"with the sheep and the oxen" (e.g., ESV). On this interpretation, PANTAS refers to the merchants and TE has the semantic force of KAI as a connective (coordinate) conjunction and effectively joins the sheep and the oxen to PANTAS as an additional object of EXEBALEN,i.e., "he put PANTAS (= the traders) and the sheep and the oxen out of the temple."
> Translations adopting the view (B) are in a slight majority.
>
> From the foregoing it will be seen that, with your understanding of PANTAS, you--and Carl W. Conrad--are neither here nor there!
I"ll speak only for myself; I had thought I had made myself sufficiently clear: I understand the passage in the sense of those versions you've cited in B above. I do not see TA TE PROBATA KAI TOUS BOAS as an additional object; rather I see them as a clarifying addendum; I think that CEV has the sense right: "together with their sheep and cattle" If I were to phrase it myself, I would make it more simply, "he drove them all out, including the sheep and cattle."
I thought I had made this clear enough, but I will repeat one last time what I wrote yesterday.
On Nov 15, 2010, at 7:23 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:
>
> I guess that I have been using "apposition" in a sense that doesn't conform quite to that strict definition; I certainly think that TA TE PROBATA KAI TOUS BOAS indicates that these creatures were also to be understood as among the "PANTAS" that functions as the direct object of EXEBALEN. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear. If you want to quibble about the word "apposition," then I will withdraw my acknowledgement that TA TE PROBATA KAI TOUS BOAS stands in apposition to PANTAS and simply state that I believe TA TE PROBATA KAI TOUS BOAS are indicated as included among the general PANTAS. I had assumed that you understood pretty well what I meant. Perhaps I was in error about that ;-).
I might add that I am reminded of an analogy made by George Bernard Shaw once. He was talking about prophetic clarifications of the OT image of God, but he explained the historical process as akin to the pouring of progressively cleaner water into a pail with very muddy water in the bottom of it; repeated additions of cleaner water never failed to leave some murkiness in the liquid contained by the pail. That's what this thread reminds me of.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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