Mason Barge in another thread wrote:I'm afraid there has been a bit of miscommunication, what with people sending me to basic online textbooks. I'm in my 5th semester of study! I can read through 1 John - perhaps with recourse to a lexicon four or five times.
My statement was meant as a somewhat humorous indication of my struggle with a passage that is notoriously difficult. As Raymond Brown put it, "As the opening words of a literary work, '[the initial four verses of 1 John] can only be described as, formally at least, bordering upon incoherence.'"
No, I don't sit and scratch my head over the lexical definition of pronouns. As you say, reading them is intuitive.
I do wish someone with thorough knowledge of the New Testament would answer the question I asked.
If you already have answers like "bordering upon incoherence" and "lapse into grammatical impossibilities" by those how know Greek relatively well, I don't think we here can suddenly say it's normal and easy to understand Greek.
Barry wrote:
With all due respect Houlden, I don't see any grammatical impossibilities
In the descriptive world nothing is impossible. But still native Koine speakers may have seen this grammar quite odd and maybe unique. After all, if anything goes in grammar, "functional equivalence" translations wouldn't exist - they wouldn't be needed if any grammar is good and easy to understand. If "literal" translations use English which is not good English, there exists "not good English". And there exists not good Koine, too. But literal translations are understandable and possible, aren't they? Difficult or non-idiomatic Koine is also understandable and possible.
About the passage at hand...
Ὃ ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἀκηκόαμεν, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν,
περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς
— καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἐφανερώθη, καὶ ἑωράκαμεν καὶ μαρτυροῦμεν καὶ ἀπαγγέλλομεν ὑμῖν τὴν ζωὴν τὴν αἰώνιον ἥτις ἦν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα καὶ ἐφανερώθη ἡμῖν—
ὃ ἑωράκαμεν καὶ ἀκηκόαμεν ἀπαγγέλλομεν καὶ ὑμῖν,
I find it easier to reduce it to some core phrases (I just select some grammatically important phrases, you may select a bit differently, and it's rewarding to do it on your own):
Ὃ ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν,
περὶ τοῦ λόγου
— καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἐφανερώθη, καὶ ἀπαγγέλλομεν ὑμῖν τὴν ζωὴν —
ὃ ἑωράκαμεν ἀπαγγέλλομεν καὶ ὑμῖν
Now it's easier to see that the fourth line continues grammatically from the first line. The third line is clearly an interlude which breaks the sentence and is marked as such in the SBLGNT. So we have
Ὃ ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα
καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν,
περὶ τοῦ λόγου,
ὃ ἑωράκαμεν ἀπαγγέλλομεν καὶ ὑμῖν
I don't find it grammatically especially difficult except "περὶ τοῦ λόγου" in the midst of two ὃ clauses. If we take the rest,
Ὃ ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα
καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν,
ὃ ἑωράκαμεν ἀπαγγέλλομεν καὶ ὑμῖν,
is there any actual problem with that? In this context "That which" is equivalent for "Ὃ" in English. What difficult is there?