Re: John 1:3 Who is AUTOU?

From: Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Date: Fri Sep 19 1997 - 07:52:18 EDT


At 03:30 PM 9/18/97 -0700, lakr wrote:
>
>The subject of John 1:1 is hO LOGOS. At John 1:2 John continues
>talking about the Logos as the subject as hOUTOUS (this one)
>still refers to the subject of verse 1. While TON QEON occurs in
>closer proximity to AUTOU in verse three, the subject of verse three is still
>the Logos. I think that Greek is the same as English here, in that
>a subject cannot be found in a prepositional phrase like the PROS TON QEON,
>in verse 2.

I've been looking for a rule like this - unfortunately, I haven't been able
to find a rule like this stated in my Greek grammars, perhaps because I'm
looking for the wrong terms in the index, perhaps because they just gloss
this over. Lars suggests that only the subject of a previous sentence can be
the antecedent of a pronoun.

I would be *very* happy if this rule is true, and it seems to make sense in
English:

1. Jim hit Fred. Then he ran out of the room.

Who ran out of the room? Jim, not Fred.

2. Jim spent several hours with Fred. Everything *he* discussed with him
seemed important at the time.

Who is *he*? Jim, not Fred. But what about sentences like this:

3. IWSIAS DE EGENNHSEN TON IECONIAN KAI TOUS ADELFOUS AUTOU (Matt 1:11)
"Josiah became the father of Jeconiah and his brothers"

I don't really know much about Josiah or Jeconiah, but I have always assumed
that Josiah was the father of Jeconiah's brothers, not of his own brothers.
In both English and Greek, Josiah is clearly the subject of the previous
clause, so the antecedent does not necessarily refer back to the subject.
However, I suspect that it prefers to. After all, it is somewhat unlikely
that Josiah would be the father of his own brothers, but what if we change
the verb:

4. IWSIAS DE HGAPHSEN TON IECONIAN KAI TOUS ADELFOUS AUTOU (hypothetical,
based on Matt 1:11)
"Josiah loved Jeconiah and his brothers"

I suspect that this is ambiguous in both English and Greek. If we want to
know whether the brothers are the brothers of Josiah or Jeconiah, the syntax
does not help us out.

What syntactic rules can we use to help us find the antecedent for a
pronoun? Are there any clear-cut rules that are not syntactic? (E.g., the
main subject of a passage is more likely to be the antecedent?)

Jonathan

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