εἰς = "with one's back turned"

[ἑκηβόλος]

It seems to be only a very small logical step from the meaning of "into" to that of "with one's back turned".

With a verb of motion, εἰς = "into". From the point of view of a person watching somebody go into somewhere, the person going in's back is turned. Substitute a verb of non-motion for a verb of motion, and we quite easily get "with one's back turned", or "facing towards". That is to say, without motion, direction becomes orientation (or as a vector tends towards length zero it retains only its direction).

Πρωΐας δὲ ἤδη γενομένης ἔστη ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν· οὐ μέντοι ᾔδεισαν οἱ μαθηταὶ ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἐστιν.

"Jesus was standing with his back to the lake (from the point of view of sb. in a boat off shore)."

Cf. That the stern of the boat would have been towards an hypothetical fishing boat standing off shore in

κατεῖχον εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν.

[This raises the question of whether μέντοι is a comment about the relationship of the events in the narrative, "yet" = "sb. in the story did sth., but didn't do sth. else" (a disfunctional relationship in the causality of the story to a greater extent), or about the relationship between the authour and the readership, "yet" "contrary to what you might expect from your own presuppositionx" (a hearer / reader's own reaction what has just been said to a greater extent).]

[Barry Hofstetter]

It seems to be only a very small logical step from the meaning of "into" to that of "with one's back turned".

With a verb of motion, εἰς = "into". From the point of view of a person watching somebody go into somewhere, the person going in's back is turned. Substitute a verb of non-motion for a verb of motion, and we quite easily get "with one's back turned", or "facing towards". That is to say, without motion, direction becomes orientation (or as a vector tends towards length zero it retains only its direction).

Πρωΐας δὲ ἤδη γενομένης ἔστη ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν· οὐ μέντοι ᾔδεισαν οἱ μαθηταὶ ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἐστιν.

"Jesus was standing with his back to the lake (from the point of view of sb. in a boat off shore)."

Except that this is an unnecessary conclusion from the context:

3 λέγει αὐτοῖς Σίμων Πέτρος, Ὑπάγω ἁλιεύειν. λέγουσιν αὐτῷ, Ἐρχόμεθα καὶ ἡμεῖς σὺν σοί. ἐξῆλθον καὶ ἐνέβησαν εἰς τὸ πλοῖον, καὶ ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ νυκτὶ ἐπίασαν οὐδέν. 4 πρωΐας δὲ ἤδη γενομένης ἔστη Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν, οὐ μέντοι ᾔδεισαν οἱ μαθηταὶ ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἐστιν. 5 λέγει οὖν αὐτοῖς [ὁ] Ἰησοῦς, Παιδία, μή τι προσφάγιον ἔχετε; ἀπεκρίθησαν αὐτῷ, Οὔ. 6 ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Βάλετε εἰς τὰ δεξιὰ μέρη τοῦ πλοίου τὸ δίκτυον...

I see nothing in the text which would indicate that his back was toward them. Jesus would have to be facing them to talk to them.

Cf. That the stern of the boat would have been towards an hypothetical fishing boat standing off shore in

κατεῖχον εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν.

I'm sorry, what? This doesn't make much sense at all. κατεῖχον εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν means "they made for shore."

[ἑκηβόλος]

It seems to be only a very small logical step from the meaning of "into" to that of "with one's back turned".

Πρωΐας δὲ ἤδη γενομένης ἔστη ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν· οὐ μέντοι ᾔδεισαν οἱ μαθηταὶ ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἐστιν.

"Jesus was standing with his back to the lake (from the point of view of sb. in a boat off shore)."

Except that this is an unnecessary conclusion from the context:

5 λέγει οὖν αὐτοῖς [ὁ] Ἰησοῦς, Παιδία, μή τι προσφάγιον ἔχετε; ἀπεκρίθησαν αὐτῷ, Οὔ.

I see nothing in the text which would indicate that his back was toward them.

Besides the possibility of this εἰς, the question expecting a negative answer, "You don't have any food, do you?" may suggest that he was looking at, (or had looked through) their belongings on the shore. It is not until verse 7 that somebody actually recognised Jesus. Since the sun rises in the East, and the events of this story probably happened on the western shore, the (early) morning sun would have highlighted Jesus' face if he had been facing and looking at them East of him out on the water.

Jesus would have to be facing them to talk to them.

There are two reasons why that is not an assumption that needs to be made. First, as neccessarily silent fans of tennis found out in April last year, sound travels across a lake, even when those who are vocalising the sounds are not looking at the game. For my part, I remember netting and fishing at night and in the early morning on still bodies of water, where even the slightest sound carried. Second, at verses 20 and 21 in that same chapter we read, Ἐπιστραφεὶς δὲ ὁ Πέτρος βλέπει τὸν μαθητὴν ὃν ἠγάπα ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀκολουθοῦντα , ... Τοῦτον ἰδὼν ὁ Πέτρος λέγει τῷ Ἰησοῦ, κύριε, οὗτος δὲ τί; Turning and looking at John, Peter asked Jesus ... There doesn't seem to have been the assumption that one needed to look at the person to whom one was speaking.

Cf. That the stern of the boat would have been towards an hypothetical fishing boat standing off shore in

κατεῖχον εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν.

I'm sorry, what? This doesn't make much sense at all. κατεῖχον εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν means "they made for shore."

Yes. It is a verb of motion using the phrase εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν. In Acts 27, presumably the boat was approaching the shore prow first. The stern to the waves. The phrase εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν in Acts 27 is being used from the viewpoint of the sea travelling towards the land. Superimposing the fishing boat from John 21 onto the scene of Acts 27, those onboard the imagined / hypothetical fishing boat would see the stern of the ship about to run aground. Somebody further out to sea than the vessel that would end up on the beach (εἰς τὸν αἰγιαλόν) would have been looking at the vessel from behind. If the orientation (directionality) of the preposition as used with a verb of motion is retained even when the motion becomes (tends to) zero, then the detail of the direction Jesus was standing may be in the text too.

The Modern Greek derivative preposition (where the εἰς was heading in its development) does not connotate directionality. During the Koine period, εἰς (and πρός) are used metaphorically with the idea of what "direction" (purpose) actions take. In Modern Greek, that idea of (metaphorical) directionality is expressed by για (< διά), and the literal directionality of εἰς with verbs of motion is still there, while it is not present with other (non-motion) verbs.

I'm saying that I think the evolution of εἰς to the Modern Greek σε / σ' entails in some part it changing from being a vector to a scalar. (With directionality in the Modern Greek preposition being changed from inherent in the preposition as in Koine Greek, to being context determined from the accompanying verb of motion).

I think that since εἰς still has directionality in the flow of ideas it may also still have it literally too. The loss of the dative can't be moved back into the periods of the language when the dative was actively in use. It may end up that εἰς replaces the dative in many instances, but that requires a loss of inherent directionality. John 21:5 was written at a time when directionality was very much part of the preposition.

I am not so quick to dismiss directionality during the Koine period, as others who say simply that it would have been ἐν, a dative or another preposition in the antecedent period

. Look at the way that the examples from BDAG, except Luke 4:23 and Acts 2:39 can be interpreted if directionality is retained. Usually that involves adding an implied verb of motion. Because 1 Peter 5:12 is so close I won't discuss it here either:

• Luke 11:7 καὶ τὰ παιδία μου μετ’ ἐμοῦ εἰς τὴν κοίτην εἰσίν· shows the result of a verb of motion, "gotten into".
• Mark 10:10 εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν likewise, "when they had arrived back home",
• Luke 9:61 τοῖς εἰς τὸν οἶκόν μου "those whom I will see after I arrive back at my home",
• Mark 13:3 καθημένου αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸ ὄρος τῶν ἐλαιῶν, he went up the mountain then sat down,
• Mark 13:16 ὁ εἰς τὸν ἀγρὸν ὢν μὴ ἐπιστρεψάτω εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω, ἆραι τὸ ἱμάτιον αὐτοῦ. "The one who is facing his labour in the field, don't let him turn around to pick up his coat,
• Mark 13:9 εἰς συναγωγὰς δαρήσεσθε "beat you when you enter a synagogue or after you're dragged into one"
• Acts 8:40 εὑρέθη εἰς Ἄζωτον "he was situated in Azotum after his translation,
• Acts 21:13 ἀποθανεῖν εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ "to be taken to Jerusalem to die",
• Acts 2:5 Ἦσαν δὲ εἰς Ἰερουσαλὴμ κατοικοῦντες Ἰουδαῖοι "Jews who had come to live in Jerusalem from ...",
• John 1:18 ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρός Perhaps there is a continuous facing or directionality of the Son towards the Father in John's Christology

[Barry Hofstetter]

If you want to argue this (and I must admit, I'm not entirely sure what you are claiming), then feel free. I will point out that historical linguists feel that it is simply an overlapping shift of the prepositions εἰς and ἐν due to normal linguistic development.