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Re: OU+PAS (1 John 2:19) (Romans 9:6 reconsidered)

On Jun 3,  3:06pm, Paul Dixon - Ladd Hill Bible Church wrote:

> I question your differentiation, however, between "not all A is B" and
> "all A are not B".  Concerning the latter, you conclude that no A is B.
> In doing so, you are equating "All A are not B" to the conditional
> thought, "A implies not B."  The problem, however, is that this does not
> follow.  "All A are not B" can be interpreted to mean that some A are not
> B.  The key may be the meaning of PAS hO (or, PANTES hOI).  It is every
> member of the class individually that is being considered, rather than the
> class as a whole.  Thus, "not every one who is from Israel is a true
> Israelite" = "every one who is from Israel is not a true Israelite."  The
> former, to be sure, is better, but I fail to see a necessary difference.

Hi Paul,

Good point!  The ambiguity shows itself clearly in 1 John 2:19, 

   hINA FANERWQWSIN hOTI OUK EISIN PANTES EC hHMWN
   (1 John 2:19)

I interpret this, according to what I perceive to be John's intent, 
in accordance with the context, "so that they might be clearly seen 
that they all are not of us." Here, OUK is construed with the verb,
so that the resultant meaning is "none of them are of us."  I'd say
that this is the way OU+verb+PAS is used in the NT.

Look how these translations are worded:

   but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
   (NIV)

   so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.
   (NAS)

(why does the NAS change FANERWQWSIN to the singular?)

   that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
   (KJV)

I think the NIV has captured the meaning well.  The NAS has the
right idea too, but perhaps the KJV preserves the original ambiguity
best.  The KJV _could_ be interpreted to mean that "some of those
who went out from us were not of us."  I think that would be a false
exegetical step.  Would one of John's 1st century readers have thought
this verse was ambiguous?  Who can say??

At any rate, I *think* that the construction of OU+verb+PAS is INTENDED
to uniformly convey a universal negation (we could also discuss Rom 3:20).

What do you think?

In Christ, 
Jim Beale
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