From: Stephen C. Carlson (scarlson@mindspring.com)
Date: Fri Jan 02 1998 - 09:05:42 EST
At 07:25 1/2/98 -0500, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>I just noticed Mounce's notes on John 1:1c in his "Basics of Biblical
>Greek." He makes the claim that the word order changes the meaning in this
>way:
>
>KAI hO LOGOS HN QEOS = "and the Word was a God"
>KAI QEOS HN hO LOGOS = "and the Word was God"
>
>My head is still swimming from reading too many pages on the article too
>quickly...but is there really a difference in definiteness due to word order?
It appears that this claim is a misapplication of Colwell's rule. Colwell's
rule (or more precisely a corollary of it) merely allows for the possibility
that that an anarthrous, pre-copulative, predicate nominative is definite,
but does not guarantee it. Indeed, determining whether such a noun is
definite
depends heavily on a close reading of the passage within its various contexts.
Carl Conrad has recently suggested one factor to consider: rhetoric; Paul
Dixon
has offered his statistics; and I have submitted that the prior probability
that QEOS is definite in John is relevant to any probabilistic analysis.
Stephen Carlson
-- Stephen C. Carlson : Poetry speaks of aspirations, scarlson@mindspring.com : and songs chant the words. http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/ : -- Shujing 2.35
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:44 EDT