Re: Dative in John 4:23

Micheal Palmer (mwpalmer@earthlink.net)
Tue, 11 Mar 1997 21:58:14 -0800 (PST)

At 9:25 PM +0900 3/11/97, Andrew Kulikovsky wrote:
>Fellow Greeks,
>
>IN John 4:23 we find the following:
>
>OTE OI ALHQINOI PROSKUNHTAI PROSKUNHSOUSIN TW PATRI EN PNEUMATI KAI
>ALHQEIA
>
>"when the true worshipper will worship the Father in spirit and truth"
>
>Now, the question I have is what kind of dative is EN PNEUMATI KAI
>ALHQEIA? How should I understand the KAI? Should I take this as two
>separate datives, EN PNEUMATI and ALHQEIA, which are linked by KAI?
>
>My gut feeling is that these are instrumental datives of manner. Brooks
>and Winbery call it an Instrumental of Manner. I also checked Moule and
>Zerwick but didn't find much help.

PNEUMATI and ALHQEIAi are both dative because they are the objects of the
preposition EN (which must always be dative). Perhaps what you are asking
may be said as "What is the function of the prepositional phrase EN
PNEUMATI? and is ALHQEIA a part of that phrase, or is it a separate
constituent with some other function?

The prepositional phrase EN PNEUMATI KAI ALHQEIAi does seem be used to
state the means by which the worshiper will worship (or the way in which
the worshiper will worship), but that does not mean that PNEUMATI and
ALHQEIAi are instrumental datives of means. They are dative simply because
they are the objects of EN (which *must* always be dative regardless of how
they function semantically), not because of their meaning in this context.

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Micheal W. Palmer
Religion & Philosophy
Meredith College

mwpalmer@earthlink.net
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