Convertible propositions (John 1:4)

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Jonathan Robie
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Re: Convertible propositions (John 1:4)

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Jason Hare wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:This thread mostly conflates grammar with logic. Grammar won't tell you if two propositions are convertible.

Converting a proposition is the same thing as finding its converse. If a proposition is true, that does not mean its converse is true. This has nothing to do with grammar, and precious little to do with the Greek language.
And yet grammarians (such as Wallace on page 31 of The Basics of New Testament Syntax, in the section entitled “Two Kinds of Semantic Relationships”) discuss the fact that convertible propositions exist in the Greek language. This is not just a question of logic, except that logic also exists within statements – to one extent or another. If both sides of the verbs εἰμί, γίνομαι and ὑμάρχω are specific enough, they refer to the same referent completely and are convertible – that is, they are specific and are logically “distributed,” thus they must both say the same thing.
I consider this a flaw in such grammars, and these tend to be the same grammars that conflate theology with grammar.

The problem is this: the grammar does not itself tell you whether the propositions are convertible. By implying that it does, these grammars cause a great deal of confusion.
Jason Hare wrote:‘The boy in the red shirt is my older brother’ is completely equivalent to ‘my older brother is the boy in the red shirt.’ They say exactly the same thing. Why? Because both are clear. ‘The boy in the red shirt’ is identifiable and distinct from the other boys that are in the area, and ‘my older brother’ is clearly a reference to one specific person. It must be that this is an instance of ‘P = Q.’
The grammar alone doesn't tell you this, you happen to know they are equivalent because of your understanding of the words. "The man in the white robe is the pope" and "the pope is the man in the white robe" are not identical statements.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Re: Convertible propositions

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Carlson wrote:A. T. Robertson thought so:
Robertson, pp.768-769 wrote:In a word, then, when the article occurs with subject (or the subject is a personal pronoun or proper name) and predicate, both are definite, treated as identical, one and the same, and interchangeable. The usage applies to substantives, adjectives and participles indifferently. Cf.. . . ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς (Jo. 1:4), . . ., etc. This list is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient to illustrate the points involved.
Jason Hare wrote:It cannot be that ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων is the same as τὸ φῶς ἦν ἡ ζωὴ τῶν ἀνθρώπων. I don't know where this is coming from. It seems to be a mistake on the part of Robertson.

The entire phrases must be interchanged. That is [ἠ ζωὴ] ἦν [τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων] can be interchanged thus: [τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων] ἦν [ἡ ζωή].
I don't think you are disagreeing with Robertson. In [ἠ ζωὴ] ἦν [τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων], [ἠ ζωὴ] is the subject, and [τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων] is the predicate. Robertson doesn't claim that part of the predicate can be exchanged for the subject without changing the meaning of the predicate.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Convertible propositions (John 1:4)

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Robertson's citation is elliptical, but I don't read him as claiming that you can switch the heads of the subject NP and the predicate NP and leave the modifier behind.
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David Lim
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Re: Convertible propositions (John 1:4)

Post by David Lim »

Stephen Carlson wrote:Robertson's citation is elliptical, but I don't read him as claiming that you can switch the heads of the subject NP and the predicate NP and leave the modifier behind.
Okay, so do you agree with Jason and I that although in John 1:4 "the life was the light of men" is equivalent to "the light of men was the life", they are not equivalent to "the light was the life of men"? At least to me it doesn't matter what Robertson said.
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MAubrey
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Re: Convertible propositions (John 1:4)

Post by MAubrey »

David Lim wrote:At least to me it doesn't matter what Robertson said.
That's not surprising.
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Re: Convertible propositions (John 1:4)

Post by Stephen Carlson »

David Lim wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:Robertson's citation is elliptical, but I don't read him as claiming that you can switch the heads of the subject NP and the predicate NP and leave the modifier behind.
Okay, so do you agree with Jason and I that although in John 1:4 "the life was the light of men" is equivalent to "the light of men was the life", they are not equivalent to "the light was the life of men"? At least to me it doesn't matter what Robertson said.
On this topic, I don't have anything to add beyond Robertson.
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David Lim
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Re: Convertible propositions (John 1:4)

Post by David Lim »

MAubrey wrote:
David Lim wrote:At least to me it doesn't matter what Robertson said.
That's not surprising.
Well what do you say? Do you disagree with anything I said about the genitive phrase?
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Scott Lawson
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Re: Convertible propositions (John 1:4)

Post by Scott Lawson »

To my untrained and simple eye it seems it in part may depend on what the definition of is is. See BDAG ειμί [2] (a), (b) and (c)
Does it mean equals or does it mean means/represents/is like?

As far as a translation of Matt. 6:22 is concerned, what is wrong with - Concerning the body, a lamp is like the eye = Concerning the body, the eye is like a lamp.

O how great the darkness! And by that I mean my darkness... ;)

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Re: Convertible propositions (John 1:4)

Post by cwconrad »

Anyone for counting angels on pinheads?
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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Iver Larsen
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Re: Convertible propositions (John 1:4)

Post by Iver Larsen »

Scott Lawson wrote:To my untrained and simple eye it seems it in part may depend on what the definition of is is. See BDAG ειμί [2] (a), (b) and (c)
Does it mean equals or does it mean means/represents/is like?
Robertson's statement is indeed curious and his examples are not convincing. I have been wondering how he could make such a statement. My guess is that there could be two reasons. He may have thought that ειμί can be compared to a mathematical = sign, since in mathematics a=b is equivalent to b=a. But ειμί is not that simple and it has many meanings apart from the rare sense of "being equal to". He may also have neglected to consider the function of Greek word order, where it is not the case that changing the order does not change the meaning, even if only slightly.

Maybe he was thinking in terms of Greek grammar where it is possible to say both
ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων and
τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἦν ἡ ζωὴ

When taken out of context maybe one could claim that these two propositions would mean the same thing and therefore be convertible, but I do not agree that one can take propositions out of context nor that the two orders have the same meaning in the original context where they follow ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν. (In him there was life (to be received), and that life was/became the light of people (brought the light to people.)

We tend to assign too much semantic weight to individual words and too little to how much the context shapes the overall meaning of a sentence.
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