I am willing and eager to hear from the word order statisticians on
this one. What I am suggesting is that the difference in the order of
words between:
OUK ESTIN SOU ANHR (John 4:18)
OUK ESTIN ANHR SOU
does not amount to anything. Even if one word order were to be
found statistically more probable than the other by a significant
margin (say 3 to 1), the word order found in John 4:18 is
sufficiently common that it is a non issue for exegesis. I dont think
we can safely attribute prominence to a word unless we have more
data to go on than we do in this example.
Another issue that must be taken into consideration when
establishing prominence or emphasis on a word is the *authors*
personal style. I looked through the 32 occurrences of SOU in JOHN
where SOU is used as a possessive and found 6 occurrences(1) of
the word order found in 4:18 and 26 occurrences of the other word
order. This is better than a 4 to 1 ratio, pretty impressive, no?
But before you jump to rash conclusions based on the numbers,
take a look at Jesus prayer in chapter 17. In 17:6 we have SOU TO
ONOMA but in 17: 26 we have TO ONOMA SOU. Now ask yourself, do
you see a distinction in this context between the prominence of
the idea of ownership in 17:6 over 17:26? I dont think so. I think the
semantic significance of the word order difference in 17:6 and
17:26 is nil.
Well it is time to go do 4th of July.
Clay Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
(1) The six occurrences are in 4:18, 9:10, 9:17, 12:28, 17:1, 17:6. A
proper test would have included the plural personal pronoun but
this test is sufficient for purposes of illustration.