Re: Jn 7.37

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Aug 02 1999 - 22:05:13 EDT


<x-rich>At 11:59 AM +1200 8/3/99, N & RJ Hanscamp wrote:

<excerpt>Could someone comment on the use of the pres middle imperative
ERCESQW in Jn 7.37. Should this be seen as a command, or does the EAN
at the beginning of the clause soften it?

</excerpt>

I've always assumed that this is an allusion to Isaiah 55:1 and John
4:14; it is an invitation, fundamentally, but as usual with Biblical
invitations, there is always a sharp suggestion that one's positive or
negative response to the invitation is fraught with ultimate
consequences for the invitee--so perhaps we should call it a "polite"
command.

<excerpt>Second is the perenial problem of punctuation in this passage.
Comments on the UBS stop after PINETW would be appreciated.

</excerpt>

With Jim, I don't understand why this punctuation should be thought
problematic. Verse 38 certainly continues with a statement closely
related to the preceding, and the sense is not going to be affected
radically by whether we read a full stop after PINETW, so far as I can
see. Personally, I'm one of those nuts who likes to uses semicolons in
my writing in order to indicate that my periodic structure hasn't yet
reached its end; perhaps that comes from Greek and Latin training; I
rather think modern English is overeager to spit out a period-mark
after every clause.

Carl W. Conrad

Department of Classics, Washington University

Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243

cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu

WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

</x-rich>



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:34 EDT