hINA, this time in 1 John 1:9
John M. Moe (John.M.Moe-1@tc.umn.edu)
Wed, 10 Sep 1997 15:38:23 +0000
Micheal Palmer wrote:
>
> Thanks to Paul Dixon for a clear coverage of the contextual factors leading
> to verse 9. I will mention the one point of slight disagreement if have,
> but not without stating first that I find much to agree with in his post.
>
> At 12:09 AM -0400 9/7/97, Paul S. Dixon wrote:
>
> >Likewise, in v. 9 if we customarily confess our sins, then the necessary
> >result is: God is faithful and righteous, and if God is faithful and
> >righteous, the necessary result (hIVA) is that He will forgive us of all
> >unrighteousness.
>
> ??? God's faithfulness and righteousness are the necessary result of our
> confession?
>
> Even if we don't infer the negation ('If we don't confess, God won't be
> faithful...'), as you correctly say we cannot, your statement still looks
> problematic. Surely it is the following clause ("He will forgive") which is
> the result, not God's faithfulness and righteousness.
>
> I believe the problem is that the parts of the sentence do not follow the
> logical order of the assertions (at least not the order in which an English
SNIP
Do we really need to try to improve on the Biblical Greek here? It
seems to me that the problem you lay out so clearly above (thanks for
doing that by the way, I have tried the same thing many times for Bible
classes dealing with this passage but never got it so well stated)
Isn't the problem that we are simply missing the point when we take EAN
to be setting up an "if A then B" type of conditional sentence? I don't
know the accepted term for the sort of "circumstantial" use of EAN I
take this to be but there is a clear example of what I mean just a short
distance from our verse at 1John 3:2 where I can find no English
translations which read "If he appears we shall be like him." There Ean
is almost always renderd "when." In one 1:9 I think I might campaign
for "whenever."
I was going to quote from an exellent (as always) post from Carl Conrad
on this use of EAN dated May 19 of this year where he answers a question
about the tranlation of EAN as 'when" at 1John 2:28. For the sake of
room I won't do that, but those who are interisted will find his good
stuff in the arcives.
John M. Moe