From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Dec 31 2000 - 07:32:23 EST
At 10:09 PM -0500 12/30/00, Steve Godfrey wrote:
>Dear Sirs,
>
>Does the presence of the definite article in John 21:17 suggest that John
>is drawing attention to what follows, thus intending a distinction between
>AGAPAO and PHILEO?
>
>Two of the authorities I have available, Morris and Carson, say
>emphatically not. However, neither of them addresses the function of the
>article in this verse, which may be important. My current deliberations
>appear below.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Steve Godfrey
>Irkutsk, Siberia
>
>--
>
>But what about that article?
>
>And yet, a problem remains. Why the article in Jesusí third question?
>Neither Temple, Morris, nor Carson note whether the article TO before
>TRITON has a special role to play. This article only appears in the third
>question. Based on BDF, this usage of the article is to mark a quotation,
>or to mark the beginning of a phrase for further consideration. BDF cites
>Matt. 19:18 as an example(1):
>
> NIV Matthew 19:18 "Which ones?" the man inquired. Jesus
> replied TO, "'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do
> not steal, do not give false testimony,
>
>John may be using the article in this third question to draw attention to
>the change in verbs. To translate:
>
> He says to him this the third time: ìSimon Son of John, do you
> PHILEO me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third
> time, ìDo you PHILEO me?î He replied, Lord, you ascertain all
> things, you know that I PHILEO you. Jesus replies, ìFeed my
> sheep.î
>
>The article was not used in the previous two quotations of this section,
>so it is unlikely that its only function in the third quotation is merely
>to mark the start of the quotation. This is of course to build a case
>merely on the presence of an article, which might seem slim grounds. This
>theory would carry more weight if there was corroborating evidence for a
>distinction between ëphileoí and ëagapawí elsewhere in Johnís writings.
[It looks like you're pasting text from a word-processor into a message;
please note that this will show up correctly on the screen only for those
(few? not so few?) who are using the same operating system and mail program
as you are using. On my screen, for instance, the Greek words shows up as
gobbledygook and what waas intended to be an apostrophe appears as an I
with an acute accent. This is why we have urged people on B-Greek please to
use plain-text ASCII for list-messages.]
>
>[1] BDF, &267.
We have had the discussion several times in recent years over whether there
is or is not an intended distinction between FILEW and AGAPAW, and as I
recall, Randy Leedy is one who argued that the article with TRITON was a
reason to think that there IS a distinction intended here. If you want I
can research dates of the discussions in our archives. My impression, for
what it's worth, is that the growing tendency in recent years is to be more
dubious that the author of John's gospel really did intend to differentiate
between meanings of FILEW and AGAPAW. (1) Although they certainly CAN have
distinct semantic focus apart from each other, there are sufficient places
in the NT where they seem to overlap in meaning; and (2) elsewhere even in
the same passage, the author seems to be using alternative words without
any real distinction: e.g. BOSKW, POIMAINW. There is no danger (or hope,
either) that this question will be resolved definitively, and I don't think
this is one that it's same to take a hand-count of who is more convinced by
which side of the argument, either. Rather, I think you must listen to what
advocates of both sides argue and then settle the matter in terms of what
you find more convincing.
For myself, I'll say that I do NOT think the addition of the article to
TRITON makes a significant difference here. I think it is a growing
tendency in Hellenistic Greek to add an article to an adverb without
thereby altering its meaning: PRWTON as adverb = "initially"; TO PRWTON
adverbially = "the first time"' is there a difference of meaning? I'm from
Missouri, you'll have to show me. KATA MEROS adverbially means "partially";
does TO KATA MEROS means something different? KAQ' hHMERAN means "daily" or
"day by day": does TO KAQ' hHMERAN means something different? I don't think
so.
--
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
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
---
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