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July 3, 2008 ©Homer
Kizer Printable/viewable PDF
format to observe Greek characters Commentary —
From the Margins
Theon, Accusative
Case of “the
only God”? _______________ 8X(,4 "ÛJ± [0F@ØHs 9Z :@L žBJ@Ls @ÜBT (D •<"$X$06" BDÎH JÎ< B"JXD"q B@D,b@L *¥ BDÎH J@×H •*,8N@bH :@L 6"Â ,ÆB¥ "ÛJ@ÃHs U<"$"\<T BDÎH JÎ< B"JXD" :@L 6"Â B"JXD" ß:ä< 6"Â 2,`< :@L 6"Â 2,Î< ß:ä< (John 20:17) _______________ Grammar
rules are always descriptive, not prescriptive; yet these rules become
prescriptive when a language transitions from “natural” users
producing “uneducated” texts to instructors teaching novices how
these natural users constructed information … grammar rules follow usage
and do not establish initial usage; however, once these rules are codified, the
educated producer of texts is obligated to follow them whereas the illiterate
users retain the freedom to establish new rules as the situation warrants, for
imbedded within the human mind is a language use template that determines how
communication should occur, with this template probably predating the confusing
of languages at Babel. Hence, the person who learns a language through the
necessity of communicating in that language with educated users of the language
tends to rigidly follow rules whereas the unsophisticated user employs the
language however the person’s mind conceives that communication can best
occur. So the person who uses a language by faith, believing that what the
person uttered will be heard and understood, bends or ignores grammar rules
that, again, are not really rules but observations about how others who have
gone before used the language. An example of an English grammar rule that
isn’t a rule pertains to the use of double negatives in a sentence: if a
person says, I don’t want no
potatoes, no reasonable person believes that the speakers wants any potatoes.
One negative doesn’t cancel out the other to make a positive, but a mid
18th-Century grammar book asserted that was the case and educated
English users have since been stuck with a nonsensical rule, for in one line of
Chaucer’s poetry there are four negatives, used to emphasis the negative. An instructor of first year New Testament Greek
will tell his or her students some variation of words switch genders for phonetic reasons and for reasons of analogy, and
that there is mandatory inclusion of the
definite article as long as the noun is definite and not abstract, that the
article has to be there and has to agree in gender, case, and number with the
noun, and that sentence order is used
for emphasis and sentence order in Koine Greek is most commonly subject,
verb, object, whereas in ancient Greek it was subject, object, verb. This New
Testament Greek instructor will make a point of emphasizing it is impossible to know or recognize the
noun’s gender from the inflected form of the article or from the noun’s
case ending; therefore, it is crucial to learn the lexical gender of every
second declension masculine, feminine, and neuter noun, and that if the article J@Ø modifies a noun, it must always be
parsed according to the lexical gender of the noun thus reflecting the
grammatical agreement between the article and the noun it modifies. But the renowned translator Robert Fagles
rendered Homer’s te theon te as
“every god” (1.22 The Odyssey),
determining that the article “te” best reflected the idea of each
of many gods taking possession of “pity.” If it is crucial for a student of Koine Greek to
learn a noun’s lexical gender, what is the student learning when meaning
must be assigned to words by the auditor? Is not gender also an assignment made
through observing how the noun functions and what articles have been assigned
to the noun … saying that meaning is assigned to words would be akin to
telling an English grammar student to read E.E. Cumming’s poetry to see
how composition rules might be applied. If the assignment of gender, case, and number to
the Greek icon Theos were as easily
made as our New Testament Greek instructor asserts, there would not have been
centuries of Christological debates, with even today no agreement as to number:
was Christ one with the Father as in one hypostasis before His birth as the man
Jesus? Christian orthodoxy asserts that He was, but neither Christian
Unitarians nor Judaism nor Islam agrees. Hence wars have been fought over the
assignment of number to the allegedly masculine singular icon 2,@H, with all sides agreeing that the number should be
one … what’s happening that linguistic agreement doesn’t
equate to human agreement? Where is the fault? The Roman Church had no great love affair with
books, burning as many as it could so as to limit the spread of alleged
heresies. Most Greek texts were burned. Very few survived other than in
translation: it is estimated that the Latin Church burned as many as fifteen
million documents, books, and codices from the 2nd through 15th
Centuries. So it is from Arabic and Latin translations that most Koine Greek
texts came to scholars in the 16th-Century—and as our first
year Greek instructor will tell his or her students, Latin often misleads a student if the student uses Latin genders to
guess at Greek genders. English has combined both the dative case and the
accusative case to form the objective case. For an English user, a noun in the
Greek accusative case functions as the direct object of the verb. This noun
will usually follow the verb. When it doesn’t follow the verb, the syntax
of the sentence (or of the clause) has been twisted to produce an effect
… the order in which an auditor encounters words inevitably produces a
hierarchy of importance. To encounter a direct object before encountering the
subject of a sentence makes some sort of statement about the object having
greater importance than the subject. To repeat a sentence or a clause is to
emphasize the information conveyed by the sentence or clause. In inscribed
communication (i.e., written texts) where the auditor can reread the linguistic
icons used to convey the particular piece of knowledge, repetition either
occurs from sloppy use of the language or from a special need to emphasize the
piece of knowledge conveyed. Determining whether repetition is accidental or
deliberate becomes a judgment call that must be made by the auditor. In an attack against Sabellian heretics, Epiphanius
references a Gospel of the Egyptians.
Was this destroyed Gospel the work of the Gnostic philosopher Basildes who
taught in Alexandria in the 2nd-Century and claimed to have a secret
tradition transmitted to him by Peter, a claim that is akin to Justin Martyr
claiming the John was a contemporary? According to Eusebius, all copies of
Basildes’ widely known Interpretation
of the Gospels were burned by order of the Church, and the burning of his
books in the 2nd-Century would seem to deny validity to
Basildes’ claim of receiving a secret tradition transmitted directly from
Peter[1]. The Gospel of John was allegedly written as a
formal rebuttal against Kerinthus, an actual contemporary of the Apostle and a
circumcised Egyptian who taught that the universe was created by angels and the
message delivered to Moses was given by angels, a teaching that would seem to
be supported by Hebrews 2:1, Acts 7:38, and Exodus 3:2, a passage in which Elohim could be falsely construed to be
angels. Therefore, John wants to make one point absolutely clear: the man Jesus
of Nazareth was a deity before His human birth; was the God of Scripture; and
returned to being with the Father when He returned to heaven. John does not
make any claim about shapeshifting, or changing forms/manifestations, or about
God being triune in nature. John’s gospel begins with, W< •DP± µ< Ò 8`(@H [In (the) beginning was the Logos] (1:1), an
independent clause that will stand by itself as a thought — the verb
“µ<” is a transitive verb, meaning that it would
ordinarily require a direct object. The noun “•DP±” is not in accusative or in nominative case
and as such cannot be the direct object of the verb. That “µ<” is a transitive verb is seen in the clause,
6"Â 2,ÎH µ< Ò 8`(@H [and Theos was the Logos] (1:1), where the verb
“µ<” transfers identity from “the
Logos” to “Theos,” thereby causing “Theos” to
retain its nominative case ending as a masculine singular noun. So John’s
Gospel begins with language that readily makes sense and makes the indisputable
claim that the Logos was God, sharing even the same definite article, “Ò,” in the third clause of the sentence. If John’s purpose was—and it apparently
was—to refute Kerinthus’ teaching about creating angels, the
refuting of the Egyptian’s teaching begins with John’s first
sentence, a sentence that has caused the Christian Church as much difficulty as
Paul’s epistles have collectively caused; for the second clause of his
initial sentence reads, 6"Â Ò 8`(@H µ< BDÎH JÎ< 2,`< [and the Logos was with the God] (1:1) … the
Logos who was God was also with the God— How much attention should a disciple pay to
definite articles? Brits and by extension Canadians have, over the past fifty
years, developed the habit of saying, I’m
going to hospital, or We’re
taking him to hospital, whereas an American will still use the definite
article, “the hospital”: We’re
taking him to the hospital. When I have asked a Brit why he or she omits
the definite article, so far I have only received the reply that the speaker
did not omit the article, but said the
hospital. This is simply not true. The definite article was omitted even if
the speaker thought he or she was saying it. For an American, the difference between
“God” and “the God” is enormous; so for translators to
omit the definite article in the second clause of John’s initial sentence
changes meanings in (for a Brit) an almost unimaginable way. If John’s
sentence were translated, “In (the) beginning was the Logos, and the
Logos was with the God, and the Logos was God,” the sentence would be
accurately translated and would be completely translated, and the presence of
two entities would be linguistically sound. One entity would be
“the” God, and one entity would also be God. And this is the point
of John repeating himself: @ÞJ@H µ< ¦< •DP± BDÎH JÎ< 2,`< [This one was in (the) beginning with the God]
(1:2). The article “the” is of such importance
to English speakers that it must be added to “beginning” before the
concept becomes mentally complete: “in beginning” just
doesn’t work whereas “in the beginning” works fine.
“God” is and isn’t “the God,” with whether He is
or isn’t depending upon the context in which the icon appears. The English language quit using case endings nearly
a millennium ago, thanks to the three centuries long overlay of Norman French
over both Old English and Old Norse then in use on the island when William the
Bastard defeated Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. Nouns lost their suffixes
as illiterate Old English speakers and Old Norse speakers orally communicated
with each other in word roots (Old English was West Germanic and Old Norse was
North Germanic so both used the same roots but differing case endings and
pronouns). Thus, when Henry V ordered that his victory at The question must be asked: How reliable was the
recovery of grammar rules for Koine Greek? The answer is, reasonably reliable,
but our instructor teaching New Testament Greek in an American seminary would
probably quibble with the qualifier “reasonably,” insisting instead
that all is known about how the language is used—and then insist that God
is triune in nature, consisting of three entities forming one hypostasis, with
this hypostasis being linguistically masculine singular. And therein lays the
problem that caused Christology to dominate theological discussions throughout
the 4th and 5th Centuries: the English word
“God,” like the Koine Greek word 2,–, is not a personal name, but a descriptive
referent for the house of the deity that is one in unity. This house
is one in singularity as the tent of flesh in which the born of spirit
disciple dwells is one in singularity … in John’s initial sentence,
the second clause, 6"Â Ò 8`(@H µ< BDÎH JÎ< 2,`<, has a direct object for the transitive verb
“µ<,” with this direct object being, “JÎ< 2,`<,” the accusative case ending (seen in the
article “JÎ<”) for the masculine singular noun “2,ÎH.” Yet the structure of the sentence,
followed by a repetitive sentence, linguistically precludes “Ò 8`(@H” from being the direct object “JÎ< 2,`<.” The structure of John’s initial sentence
makes 2,ÎH and 2,`< separate entities, both God, both textually
present throughout John’s Gospel, but with 2,ÎH—and here the noun is used as a name to
distinguish it from the direct object of the second clause, JÎ< 2,`<—being the One who entered His creation as
His only Son, the man Jesus of Nazareth. With the appropriate definite article, Theon is the genitive plural of Theos, as Theos, itself, in its unaccented form changes gender. Returning briefly to “God” being the
identifier for the house of the deity of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as
“Chanel” is the identifier for the House of Chanel, the fashion
house that carries on the concepts of the famed designer, Coco Chanel, Paul
writes, “For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly house, is
destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in
heaven” (2 Cor 5:1). This “house—@Æ6\"” is “a building from God—@Æ6@*@:¬< ¦6 2,@Ø,” and this building from God is the house to
which Jesus has gone ahead to prepare a room or a staying [:@<"Â] (John 14:2); therefore, when the mortal flesh
puts on immortality, a disciple has a room or a staying in the house of the
Father. But meanwhile, within the disciple’s earthly house [¦B\(,4H @Æ6\"] dwells the new creature born of spirit [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] as well as Christ Jesus in the form of the spirit
or breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø] and the crucified old man or the former nature of
the person. So with the disciple’s fleshly body are three breaths or spirits,
with “spirit” being from Norman French, from Latin spīritus, the direct translation of
the Greek icon B<,L:", meaning “breath,” or
“wind,” or any form of moving air: a force invisible to the eye as
air is invisible. These three breaths are the natural breath of the person,
“psuche,” plus the
spiritual “breaths” of the Father and the Son, both of which are
holy breaths. And the problem of linguistic singleness has just
been transferred from deity to the breaths of the Father and the Son … when
a prisoner in I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to
walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all
humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager
to maintain the [oneness of the spirit—©<`J0J" J@Ø B<,b:"J@H] in the bond of peace. There is one body and one
Spirit –just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your
call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is
over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us
according to the measure of Christ’s gift. (Eph 4:1-7) The referent of the expression, “one
Lord—,ÍH 6bD4@H,” would be, from the sentence construction,
an entity separate from the “one God and Father of all—,ÍH 2,ÎH 6"Â B"J¬D BV<JT<,” with both being linguistically masculine
singular entities. As there was one hope and one calling, there is one Lord and
one God and Father—and that one Lord, when resurrected from death (Rom
10:9), said He was going to the one Father and God of Him and of His brothers [B@D,b@L *¥ BDÎH J@×H •*,8N@bH :@L 6"Â ,ÆB¥ "ÛJ@ÃHs U<"$"\<T BDÎH JÎ< B"JXD" :@L 6"Â B"JXD" ß:ä< 6"Â 2,`< :@L 6"Â 2,Î< ß:ä<] (John 20:17). The requirement of every disciple is to profess
with the mouth that Jesus is Lord and to believe in the heart that God raised
Jesus from the dead. John, more so than the other gospel writers, wanted to
stress the divinity of the Logos who entered His creation to be born as the man
Jesus of Nazareth, and whether New Testament Greek instructors like it or not,
John, in his construction of his first two sentences of his gospel, separates
“the one Lord” from “the one God and Father of all.”
The repetition was for effect in somewhat the same way an English speaker would
say, I don’t want no potatoes,
for the Logos was in the beginning; this one was in the beginning with the God.
The Logos is I Am, as in “He
existed in the beginning, He was God, and He was with the God.” He is
ever-present, always (the repetition used for emphasis as John used repetition
for emphasis; John wrote to instruct, not to impress linguists by his
enlightened use of the language). Trinitarians took the structural separateness that prevents one linguistic masculine singular entity
from being another masculine singular entity—if both are truly masculine
singular (John wrote without ascents and without lower case letters as far as
is known)—and assumed that one entity had to be the other entity if the
monotheism of Judaism was to have any bearing on Christian dogma. This
assumption was false, and was a tradition given to a lawless Church so that it
could not have life as God gave to lawless ancient Israel statutes and rules by
which this nation could not have life (Ezek 20:25-26); for the person who
assigns personhood to the “breath” of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] commits blasphemy against the Father and the Son.
Most likely this person will also commit blasphemy against the empowering
breath of God when the person is liberated from indwelling sin and death. * * * "Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©
2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved." * * * *
* [ Current Commentary ] [ Archived Commentaries ] [ Home ] [1] Peter would have died before Basildes was born or
at best when Basildes was a very small infant as Justin Martyr was reportedly
born in the year when John is assumed to have died. This would be akin to
someone of the post WWII baby boom claiming President Roosevelt as a
contemporary. |