Re: 1John and AP ARXHS

From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Date: Thu Dec 18 1997 - 12:32:35 EST


At 08:23 AM 12/18/97 -0800, lakr wrote:

>Now for my first question. Is is grammatically correct to consider
>'O HN AP ARXES' as being 'that which [we heard] was from the beginning' ?

I'm uncomfortable with the interjection of [we heard] here. "That which was
from the beginning" seems like a good rendering to me. Taken in context, we
can see that this refers to Jesus, so "He who was from the beginning" might
also be legitimate, but it detracts from the feeling of suspense - when you
hit the first sentence, you don't know what was from the beginning, and
this unfolds slowly over the course of the next few verses. "That which was
from the beginning" maintains this feeling of suspense.

>and would it be grammatically correct to interpret 2:13 as
>'YOU have known him, from the beginning' ? If so, is it the
>word order that makes this consistently translated as 'You have
>known him who was from the beginning', and would the phrase need
>to be 'TON EGNWKATE AP ARXHS' to have the latter meaning ?

In this case, TON AP ARCHS is one noun phrase, meaning "him who is from the
beginning. If you wanted to say something like "for from the beginning, you
have known him", you might say, e.g. hOTI EGNWKATE AUTON AP ARCHS, but as
it is, I don't see any ambiguity. Maybe the best way to see this is to try
to leave off AP ARCHS with each of the two sentences: hOTI EGNWKATE AUTON
is still a complete phrase, with the pronoun functioning as an object for
the verb. hOTI EGNWKATE TON needs a noun to complete the phrase. TON AP
ARCHS provides a complete noun phrase which functions as the object of the
verb EGNWKATE.

>Also, in my Greek text it sets off these verses, 1John 2:12-14, in
>an indented fashion, but it does not appear to be a quote from
>the OT, so is there a technical name for this section ?
 
The parallelism in these verses is seen as a form of poetic expression,
which is why it is indented.

Jonathan

Jonathan
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Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com

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