From: Adrian Popa (a.popa@virgin.net)
Date: Thu Mar 13 1997 - 06:30:50 EST
Michael,
> The water refers to the normal process of physical birth. Even in
> English we still say of that a woman's "water" breaks when she is
> giving birth. The child is born "from water" (EX UDATOS). Likewise,
> we must be born from spirit (EK PNEUMATOS).
One difficulty here would perhaps be that this interpretation does away
with the ambivalence of ANWQEN ("from above", "again") in v. 3 --
supposing, of course, that EX hUDATOS KAI PNEUMATOS in v. 5 elaborates
on the meaning of ANWQEN. (I think it is Carson who makes this point in
his commentary on John).
Adrian Popa
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