Re: Is anyone out there; John 1:1

• To: PRAISE G-D FOR ALL THINGS <WHEIDLER@trevecca.edu>
• Subject: Re: Is anyone out there; John 1:1
• From: robert westmoreland <rwestmor@silver.ucs.indiana.edu>
• Date: Sun, 20 Nov 1994 20:09:53 -0500 (EST)
• Cc: B-Greek@virginia.edu
• In-Reply-To: <01HJP4XDG6GI984M9P@trevecca.edu> from "PRAISE G-D FOR ALL THINGS" at Nov 20, 94 09:54:47 am

> 
> John 1:1 =>  In the beginning was the Word, and
> the Word was with God,....
> 
> 1.  Why is the word order for the first phrase start
> with "In the beginning" and not with "The Word"?
> 

I'm not sure I get the point of your question, but maybe this helps:

(1)	It is possible in many languages for the grammatical subject
	to trade places, so to speak, with a locative or temporal
	adverbial, at least when the verb is 'to be'. So syntactically
	it's not unusual for the first phrase to be the temporal "In 
	the beginning" rather than the subject "the Word".

(2)	As for why, it seems to be a universal principle of discourse
	organization to put "old" information before "new" in a sentence.
	In this case, it pretty much goes without saying that "in the
	beginning was something"; what might be new to the reader is
	the information that this "something" was the Word. So, 'the
	Word' is the newer information, and more naturally occurs at
	the end of the sentence.

--Robert Westmoreland

• Is anyone out there; John 1:1
• From: PRAISE G-D FOR ALL THINGS <WHEIDLER@trevecca.edu>

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