From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 16 1998 - 15:36:13 EST
At 9:54 AM -0600 3/16/98, dalmatia@eburg.com wrote:
>List Members ~
>
>This opening to the Book of John has been on my 'back burner' for a
>long time now. Our English 'In the beginning...' carries a vastness
>of feeling in connotation that can, I believe, be very directly
>attributed to to the KJV translation of EN ARQH, and perhaps as a
>consequence I have been very hesitant to hurry past it in
>understanding its meaning. Every so often, I see new aspects that had
>not occurred to me before, and now is one of those times.
>
>Three things stand out here ~
>
>1 ~ ARQH is feminine
>
>2 ~ ARQH has no article
>
>3 ~ The obvious relationship of this passage to Genesis 1.
>
>It would seem that by ARQH being in the feminine, without an article,
>it has an encompassing quality ~ "...And the earth was without form
>and void...", which then gives EN the meaning of "Within" [as 'within'
>the anarthous feminine encompassment].
This appears to be more a question of how the KJV relates to the GNT than a
question of what the GNT means in and of itself. Let me just say off the
bat:
(1) I think the fact that ARCH (normally we use Q for theta, and we agree
to disagree over chi, some of us--most of us?--preferring to use C for chi,
while others prefer to use X for chi--see the transliteration suggestions
that came out with the FAQ to subscribers)--backing up, I think the fact
that ARCH is feminine bears no relationship to anything in the meaning; it
is an "accident," if you will, of morphology; it means that ARCH will take
feminine adjectives but tells us nothing about the gender-propensities of
the IDEA of "beginning."
(2/3) I think these are related: I think most interpreters would agree that
the Johannine EN ARCHi that opens the prologue is a deliberate echo of
B'RSHITH in the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 and of EN ARCHi of the LXX of Genesis
1:1. But I don't think the fact that there's no article relates at all to
the TOHU W'BOHU description of chaos that follows in Genesis 1:1. The
linkage to Genesis 1:1 is deliberate, but I don't think that there's any
interpretative secret lying in the fact that ARCH is feminine and appears
without article, beyond the very fact that it deliberatley imitates Genesis
1:1.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:39:14 EDT