Not if it is an unsupported, false accusation. At this point, you seem to be just trolling.
Well this has been fun. But all good things must come to an end.
What we the “Deity of Christ crowd” rejoice to take away, in place of our Mickey-Mouse Greek, is that:
“1 John 1:1 is a complete sentence, and nothing is amiss from it.”
“No scholar with an inkling of good sense would say that it is ungrammatical for the neuter relative ὃ to be a reference to λόγος in this verse.”
“the writer is jettisoning grammatical gender”
“The relative clauses in verse 1 cannot be the objects of ἀπαγγέλλομεν in verse 3 because of the simple fact that ἀπαγγέλλομεν is governing verse 3."
“The grammatical gender of τράπεζα is feminine, but it is not uncommon in Greek to refer to it with a neuter form of the pronoun.”
“A relative clause is an adjectival clause.”
“in the sentence γράφω περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς , τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς is the direct object.”
We stand ashamed to have resisted these truths. We concede defeat at the hands of a master, and shall troll no more.
Fare well.
Hi mwh,
I stand by all of those quotes, except the last one (bold) where I carelessly misspoke. I meant to say τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς is the object of the preposition. Thanks for pointing that out.
No, read what Meyer said. He renders ὃ ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς as ‘that which was from the beginning’. One can either say that he adds an imaginary demonstrative pronoun as antecedent - or as mwh prefers, there is no antecedent - these are two ways of saying the same thing, so far as I can see.
Meyer on 1 John 1.3:
1Jn 1:3. In the opening words of this verse: ὃ … ἀκηκόαμεν, the object expressed in 1Jn 1:1 is resumed, and the governing verb, which was there already in the apostle’s view, is added.
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
But you furnished me Meyer in response to my following question ; “Why would the apostle use the neuter form of the pronoun to refer to ὁ λόγος (masculine) / Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (masculine) ?” You now seem to be doing an about turn and denying that λόγος τῆς ζωῆς is a reference to ὃ in 1 John 1:1. Is that correct ?
Read what he says again. He says that John understands by ὃ ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς to be the λόγος τῆς ζωῆς or the ζωή:
ὃ ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς> ] This thought, indefinite in itself, is more fully explained by the following relative clauses to this extent, that “that which was from the beginning” is identical with that which was the subject of perception by the apostle’s senses. But from the appositional adjunct περὶ κ.τ.λ. and the parenthetical sentence, 1Jn 1:2, it follows that > John understands by it the λόγος τῆς ζωῆς or the ζωή, and more exactly the ζωὴ ἡ αἰώνιος, which was with the Father and was manifested> .
He even gives his reason for why the apostle is referring to λόγος τῆς ζωῆς with a neuter pronoun ὃ. See here:
By far the greatest number of commentators interpret ὃ ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς correctly of the personal Christ. > The reason why John did not write ὅς (comp. chap. 1Jn 2:13 : τὸν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς), but ὅ, cannot.. be found in> .. [4 explanations, which Meyer rejects}
The neuter is rather to be explained in this way, that to the apostle Christ is “the life” itself> ; > but this idea in itself is an abstract (or general) idea.[25] True, the apostle could have written even ὅς instead of the neuter; but > as Christ has His peculiar importance just in this, that He is the Life itself (not merely a living individual),—comp. Gospel of Joh 14:6,—and as John begins his Epistle filled with this conception, it was more natural for him to write here ὅ than ὅς.[26]
This excuse does not address the grammar , and I don’t see how his excuse, by calling “the life” an “abstract idea” ("The neuter is rather to be explained in this way, that to the apostle Christ is “the life” itself[/b]; but this idea in itself is an abstract (or general) idea"), helps his cause that “the life” at this time is a “personality.”
You now seem to be doing an about turn and denying that λόγος τῆς ζωῆς is a reference to ὃ in 1 John 1:1. Is that correct ?
You had said that:
Meyer is correct that the antecedent of ὃ in 1 John 1:1 is ὁ λόγος τῆς ζωῆς.
I was pointing out that he never said that it was the grammatical antecedent.
He actually says that περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς is an appositional adjunct to ὃ ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς. So they may well be referring to the same thing - or person. That does not mean that it is the antecedent. On the contrary, it seems to me that an appositive follows after what it is in apposition to. An antecedent precedes in thought that which it is antecedent to.
Meyer on verse 2:
Without bringing to an end the thought begun in 1Jn 1:1, from the exact continuation of which he has already digressed in περὶ τοῦ λόγου τ. ζ.,..
This whole verse [verse 2] is of course parenthetical..
Obviously, he wouldn’t describe περὶ τοῦ λόγου τ. ζ. as a digression if it contained the antecedent.
Andrew
You’re severely mis-reading and mis-understanding your own source. When he says “περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς is an appositional adjunct to ὃ ἦν ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς”, he’s not saying that they are appositives . For starters, an appositive to another substantive must be in the same case.
I was mulling over 1 John 1:2 just now:
καὶ > ἡ ζωὴ > ἐφανερώθη, καὶ ἑωράκαμεν καὶ μαρτυροῦμεν καὶ ἀπαγγέλλομεν ὑμῖν τὴν ζωὴν τὴν αἰώνιον, > ἥτις > ἦν πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα καὶ ἐφανερώθη ἡμῖν,—
ἥτις (grammatical gender agreement) here just doesn’t seem right if ἡ ζωὴ is supposed to be a “person” (and the Divine person at that), for then the biblical writer would have jettisoned the feminine for the masculine (ὅστις in this case) just as another biblical writer does at Col. 2:19–
καὶ οὐ κρατῶν τὴν > Κεφαλήν> , ἐξ > οὗ > πᾶν τὸ σῶμα διὰ τῶν ἁφῶν καὶ συνδέσμων ἐπιχορηγούμενον καὶ συνβιβαζόμενον αὔξει τὴν αὔξησιν τοῦ Θεοῦ.
It would be as difficult ( insulting ) for the biblical writer to refer to the apparent “person” of “the Light” / “Second Divine person of the Trinity” (i.e. ἡ ζωὴ) with a feminine relative pronoun here as it would be to refer to Christ (i.e.τὴν Κεφαλήν, even if only a man) with the feminine pronoun ἧς (instead of οὗ) . . Now, on the other hand, if ἡ ζωὴ is not a person but a thing (like pre-existent torah) then there is not the same difficulty present IMHO in leaving grammatical concord intact here.
I was filtering through Smyth’s Grammar this evening and chanced upon the following, 2502 :
d. The relative may stand in the neuter, in agreement with the notion implied in the antecedent rather than with the antecedent itself; as διὰ τὴν πλεονεξία_ν, δ̀ πᾶσα φύσις διώκειν πέφυ_κεν ὡς ἀγαθόν for the sake of profit, a thing which every nature is inclined to pursue as a good P. R. 359c.
You’ve quoted from a botched text. Can you spot the major typo in what you’ve copied and pasted? Of course, the underscores are to represent the macron (such that α_ means ᾱ and υ_ means ῡ), but there is a real problem with what you pasted. Can you point it out? How would you type it up so that it is correct?
Jameson, I read the words as follows – διὰ τὴν πλεονεξίαν, ὃ πᾶσα φύσις διώκειν πέφυκεν ὡς ἀγαθόν
I don’t see a “major” typo here. Could you point it out ?
What you originally pasted does not contain ὅ in it. Do you really see no difference (if not, it doesn’t surprise me).
διὰ τὴν πλεονεξία_ν, δ̀ πᾶσα φύσις διώκειν πέφυ_κεν ὡς ἀγαθόν.
Do you think that δ and ὃ are the same thing?
By the way, I’m not Jameson on this forum, just as you are not John Milton.
No, but I “got” what δ actually meant here, it’s an obvious typo, not a “major” one. I fear Jaihare that you’re out on the troll again.
Get some rest,
This typo was the very example that the text was trying to pull as for demonstration, yet you didn’t even read the Greek text and spot the problem. It wouldn’t have been a major typo had it not been the focus of the grammatical note you were quoting without comprehension.
I did read the Greek text and spotted the “problem” (as you call it) but felt that it didn’t need pointing out because it was so obvious. Jaihare, I fear that you’re trolling , perhaps because you don’t really have a valid argument at 1 John 1:1..
In any case, I was reading through this very informative article by James L. Boyer. Following are a few interesting statistics:
Location of Antecedent
The very term antecedent suggests that the antecedent comes
before the relative, as it actually does in 1089 cases (about 82%). But
in 244 cases the antecedent follows the relative in the sentence> . If one
subtracts the 69 places where the pleonastic pronoun is counted as an
antecedent following the relative, there are 175 cases (less than 13%)
in which the antecedent follows the relative.How far before or after the relative the antecedent may be found
is not easy to summarize even with all the statistics at hand. Counting
inclusively (that is, a count of two means it is the next word) a few
observations may be helpful. Full statistics are available.
Antecedent before relative:
Next word before. 39%
5 words or less before 25%
10 to 20 words before 10%
over 20 words before 3%
Antecedent after relative> :
Next word after 25%
5 words or less after 71 %
10 to 20 words after 31 %
over 20 words after 4%
In the peace of the true Christ,
So here are the statistics and the grammar from Mr. Boyer’s study which I found pertinent to my reading of 1 John 1:1.
(a) “Every pronoun has an antecedent, the nominal in place of which the pronoun stands.”
(b) “The antecedent of a relative pronoun may be a simple noun or a substantival expression. By approximate count, 900 antecedents of relative pronouns are nouns, 150 are pronouns, 160 are other substantival expressions, 100 are the subject expressed in the person and number of the verb, and 340 antecedents are left to be understood from the context.”
(c) “The very term antecedent suggests that the antecedent comes before the relative, as it actually does in 1089 cases (about 82%). But in 244 cases the antecedent follows the relative in the sentence.” (As already noted, in 31% of such cases the relative is found “10 to 20 words after.”)
(d) "Normally, gender and number agree with the antecedent, but the case of the relative is determined by its grammatical function in its own clause. The exceptions to this rule are often called by grammarians “ad sensum” agreement, i.e., agreement in sense but not in grammatical form.There are 25 examples in the NT (of relative pronouns) that may be classified in this category.-- Phil. 3:20, 2 Peter 3:6, 1 Cor. 3;17, Luke 6;17-8, etc.. "
\
If Mr. Boyer’s analysis and statistics are correct, the reading which I’m proposing is rather unremarkable. Every one of the grammatical elements which I’m asserting for my reading has precedent (multiple times each) in the GNT. I don’t have to go looking for a verb to govern dangling clauses, for example, something funky for which there is no grammatical precedent in the GNT.
The bits that are in fact pertinent to the construction are these:
“Nominal Relative Clauses
There are 473 relative clauses in the NT for which the antecedent
of the relative pronoun is lacking, left to be supplied, or understood.
The relative pronoun is usually translated by “the one who,” “that
which,” or “what” (= “that which,” not the interrogative). Actually, it
is better to consider the relative as containing in itself its antecedent,
and the entire clause becomes in effect a substantive.
…
Direct Object of the Verb
The largest number of the nominal relative clauses, 222 (47%),
function as direct object of the verb.”
Four of these, of course, are the first four relative clauses of 1 John.
But Isaac Newton has made it abundantly clear that he is incorrigibly committed to his peculiar and quite obviously untenable reading. Nothing will shake him from it; futile to try. I only wish he would realise that there’s nothing to be gained by continuing to pester people on this forum with it.
Mwh, these are relative clauses for which the antecedent of the relative pronoun is lacking, so not pertinent to my analysis.
Direct Object of the Verb
The largest number of the nominal relative clauses, 222 (47%),
function as direct object of the verb.> ”
Again these pertain to relative clauses for which the antecedent of the relative pronoun is lacking.
But Isaac Newton has made it abundantly clear that he is incorrigibly committed to his peculiar and > quite obviously untenable reading> .
But this is an argument by “because I say so”, though.
Six or seven individuals have been strenuously asserting that the first four relative clauses at 1 John 1:1 function as objects of the verb ἀπαγγέλλομεν in verse 3. This is an extraordinary claim, and we know that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidences.
In order for this “grammatical” claim to get off the ground in my books, I need to see evidence – at least one similar example of such a construction from the GNT. I have requested for such evidence but there is always silence (or else abusive “responses”). So I have stopped asking.
On the other hand it shouldn’t surprise me that those who proffer this reading are still at zero examples. Since it is rather strange that a verb which first clearly governs it’s own relative clause , should then apparently also govern four more relative clauses ( not obviously related to it syntactically and) separated from it.
Confident sounding assertions , and assertions made by force of numbers are not necessarily truthful assertions. Always we must ask for evidence,-- the weirder the claim, the more powerful the evidence one must ask for.
I didn’t post for your benefit, Isaac, since I know that would be futile, but for the benefit of anyone unfamiliar with this perennial thread and your behavior.