From: Paul Dixon - Ladd Hill Bible Church (pauld@iclnet.org)
Date: Wed Jun 04 1997 - 21:59:15 EDT
On Tue, 3 Jun 1997, Jim Beale wrote:
> 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?)
Good question. It does seem here the NAS violates its own principles of
translation and takes own the philosophical approach of the NIV where they
translate more from Greek idiom to English idiom, rather than word for
word translation.
> 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??
Jim, I prefer the more literal, non-interpretive translations of either
the NAS or the KJV. The NIV is by nature more interpretive and
paraphrastic. So, until it can be demonstrated conclusively that
OU+verb+PAS implies a universal negation, then it is best to leave the
ambiguity in the translation.
This is an extremely interesting discussion which I'd love to pursue (the
wife is beckoning me to dinner just now - yum+love), so I'd better cut off
soon. Just this. Check out 1 Jn 3:9, the classic refutation of
antinomianism verse. There we have something similiar going on. Yet, I'd
opt for the universal negation translation simply because of the immediate
context which certainly calls for it. More later.
Paul Dixon
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