Re: Johannine ARCH (was Jn.1:1b word order)

From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Date: Tue Feb 10 1998 - 18:04:05 EST


At 12:06 PM 2/10/98 -0800, lakr wrote:
 
>Jonathan, this is precisely the point I am trying to get a handle on.
>What time period ARXH refers to is not as important as what it means to be
>'EN ARXH'. Were Ruth and Naomi in your example above in Bethlehem
>prior to the harvest, or did they arrive just in time ? Would the
>verse make any sense at all, if they happened to live in Bethlehem
>and were already there ? I understand that Greek prepositions have
>a very, very wide range of usages, but if one is _in_ a time period
>can it be said that one _preceded_ the time period ?

I do not believe that EN states anything about the state before or after,
though I suspect that there may be a pragmatic implicature. In the Ruth
passage, it is explicitly stated that they came at this time, and were not
there beforehand, so the context would cancel such a pragmatic implicature.

In Genesis 1:1 or John 1:1, there is no hint of a transition leading up to
the time that Jesus was there at the beginning, and since all things were
created by means of the LOGOS, I have to assume that the LOGOS existed when
the first thing was created.

Are you saying that the LOGOS came into being *before* the first thing was
created? If so, John 1:1 does not tell us about this.

Jonathan
 
jonathan@texcel.no
Texcel Research
http://www.texcel.no



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