B-Greek: The Biblical Greek Forum

Hey Stephen Carlson.

I needed to ask a Greek expert a question and unfortunately, this website does not allow me to DM people.

Colwell's construction states that: "An anarthrous preverbal PN is normally qualitative, sometimes definite, and only rarely indefinite." If this is the case, why are the pre-verbal PNs in these verses indefinite (John 8:44, John 9:8, John 9:17, John 10:13, John 18:37, John 4:19, John 8:48, John 10:1, John 10:33) ἀνθρωποκτόνος in John 8:44, for example, is a pre-verbal PN which is indefinite (a murderer)?

Wallace, Greek Grammar p.261, points out that one cannot determine whether a noun is qualitative or indefinite/definite merely by looking at its translation into English. This comment was made in his criticism of Colwell who assumed that predicates with "a(n)" before the noun were indefinite. In fact, they usually are qualitative, and Wallace cites two studies, one by Philip B. Harner and another by Paul Stephen Dixon, to the effect that the predicative nominative, esp. in John, are overwhelming qualitative (like 80%) and the rest definite. So the fact ἀνθρωποκτόνος in John 8:44 is idiomatically translated into English as "a murderer" does not really tell us whether it is indefinite or qualitative.

joshmichaels wrote: ↑September 10th, 2022, 3:22 pm I needed to ask a Greek expert a question and unfortunately, this website does not allow me to DM people.

Correction: As a matter of protecting forum users from unwanted approaches, new members do not have forum permissions to send private messages to other users. Once they have used the forum a bit and it is clear that they are not here to be a nuisance, users are moved into another category that allows private messages. It’s not that the forum disallows private messages generally or that you specifically have been placed on some sort of probation. It is a safety feature of the software.