Re: Wallace's Grammar

Mitchell Andrews (mitchell3@juno.com)
Sun, 12 Jan 1997 00:24:35 EST

<alanf@mdhost.cse.tek.com> wrote:
>Wallace, in the section of his book under question, is explicitly
arguing
>against the Jehovah's Witness position. He appears to be a good enough
>scholar to know about the texts I pointed out, yet he fails to mention
>them. Therefore, I can only conclude that he deliberately omitted them.
>He may have done so for good reasons, and that is precisely the reason
>for my post to B-Greek -- to see if there are any good reasons to omit
>them. I am completely open to correction if I misjudged Wallace and
will
>make a public apology if appropriate.

I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses who has read most of Wallace's Grammar.
While I will not here comment on his theology nor what I think of his
Grammar, I will comment briefly on Wallace's "historic present" argument
with respect to the New World Translation's rendering of John 8:58.

It is difficult to comment on the specifics of Wallace's argument since
Jehovah's Witnesses do not defend the use of the historic present in John
8:58, on which Wallace based his argument. The Greek of our position is
elucidated in "The New World Translation Reference Bible, 1984, p.1582."
We maintain the view that it is the Present of "Extension from Past Time"
idiom and cite various reasons and authorities. Wallace briefly mentioned
this latter view when commenting on Scholar McKay's position, who also
maintains the same view as Jehovah's Witnesses. The use of the Present
"Extension from Past Time" idiom is well-supported in both the GNT and
LXX.

For further details, please refer to the b-greek archives where this
position was analzyed and probed in great detail, or, feel free to
contact me offline.

Respectfully,
Mitchell Andrews