O.k., we’ll just have to agree to dis-agree..
Fair enough, Isaac, and thanks - but I’ve not yet read Andrew’s post above, and so if that leads me to revise my opinion on the ‘relative clause’ issue, I’ll let you know. That still leaves the problem of ἀκούω + accusative in verse 1 - I don’t know if you (or anyone else) can help with that.
Best wishes,
John
Hi, Andrew, and many thanks for your comments.
In my previous posts I perhaps overemphasised the importance of the demonstrative pronoun in the main clause; as your second example from Galatians shows, the demostrative is sometimes understood. Cf. also Pilate’s memorably trenchant comment in John 19.22 - Ὃ γέγραφα γέγραφα. Here, it seems to me, the demonstrative is omitted to enhance the rhetorical effect.
Whether the demonstrative is present or only implied, the key point of course is that, in all these examples, the preceding relative clause furnishes the object of the main clause.
Best wishes,
John
That’s a nice quiz. I got 8/10, plus I didn’t remember “how are you?”. I didn’t know “monkey”, and for “cat” I only remembered the word γαλῆ, which for some reason new Loeb editions of Aristophanes translate “cat”, but I think the word really means “weasel”. I’m not sure there were cats in the Greek world in the Classical period, though there certainly was later on with the conquest of Egypt. My word for “jump” was ἄλλομαι, but I suppose it’s acceptable, not poetic or anything?
I have a complaint with “yes”. Although technically ναί is the closest equivalent, I think in actual Greek you would typically repeat the emphasized word of the question, so that the reply “yes” to ἆρα τούτο οἶσθα; would be οἶδα.
Hi John,
In your examples, and mine from Galatians, the relative pronoun and its antecedent stand as the object in both clauses. But with the first clause of 1 John 1.1, the relative pronoun is the subject of the first clause. I feel this makes a difference, but I can’t put my finger on why.
Let’s take a minimal Isaac-type reading, for sake of argument, with just the first relative clause, first with normal word order, and also give it a masculine relative pronoun:
γράφω περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς, ὃς ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς.
I stand to be corrected, but I think that is OK.
Then change the word order:
ὃς ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, γράφω περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς.
That no longer seems like Greek to me, do you agree? Since all I have done is change the word order, this must be a word order issue, I would have thought.
Andrew
Hi, Andrew.
In the first clause of 1 John 1.1, I would say that the thing denoted by the relative pronoun is the subject of its own clause there, but also becomes the object (with a demonstrative understood - cf. our earlier exchanges) of the main verb, which I (and you?) would say was ἀπαγγέλλομεν. To offer a crude English example:
‘What was on my plate, [that] I ate.’
I agree with you about
ὃς ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, γράφω περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς.
Try as I might, I can’t recognise this as acceptable Greek word order - the two clauses just don’t cohere, or ‘work’ in the same way as all the other examples we’ve looked at so far. Such an order could in my view only work if the relative was neuter, and denoted what one was writing about the Word.
Best wishes,
John
Absolutely, it’s completely obvious to me from a common sense point of view, but I have developed an interest in it from what I suppose is a sort of theoretical viewpoint - I guess I am quite interested in how things work, as well as the fact that they do.
Actually, I was half-thinking that τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς was an object in Isaac’s scheme. ‘I am writing about the word of life’ - is ‘the word of life’ an object of the verb? Now that I think about it, I am inclined to think that περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς might be an adverbial prepositional phrase modifying [γραφω] which is then intransitive. In which case, I think I now understand your point about the object more clearly. Is that what you are saying, that the main clause doesn’t have an object in Isaac’s scheme? Thanks,
Andrew
Of course it is , though in my “scheme” the genitive word τῆς ζωῆς is functioning in an epexegetical way to the preceding λόγου. I’m not averse to the way you have it however.
There is no difference between saying Ὃ ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς [γράφω] περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς and saying [γράφω] περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς Ὃ ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς. Both can be translated into English as follows:
“[I’m writing] concerning the Word, that is, the Life which was from the beginning.”
You have a problem with the former because that sort of word order would not be acceptable in English. Stop reading it like an English sentence.
Actually, you’re smoothing over the problems of your proposed text by translating it into English. If you would quit reading it as English, then you might be able to see why everyone else has a problem with what you’re proposing.
Explain.
If you would > quit reading it as English, > then you might be able to see why > everyone > else has a problem with what you’re proposing.
Other than an appeal to numbers (3 or 4 people) , you literally didn’t contribute anything of substance unfortunately.
Just more aggression in your posts.
What does the koine speaker do when he sees the following sentence ?
Ὃ ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς [γράφω] περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς
Does he process the sentence beginning with Ὃ (which most of you are unfortunately doing) or does he start with γράφω ? That’s the first clue.
Remember, this is a highly inflected language and sometimes thinking the sentence in English is the worse thing we can do. People who already speak an inflected language will certainly have an easier time conceptualizing the above sentence. The koine speaker will process the sentence somewhat as follows:
I am writing about the Word, that thing which was from the beginning.
As I now see all the time on Facebook: SMH (“shaking my head”). It’s just stunning.
Sorry for intruding, but can someone tell me where the supplied [γράφω] comes from ? I’ve read the post for quite some time but can’t remember when it became part of the discussion…
In English idiom, we say “thin air.” Everyone in the thread is just allowing it for the sake of discussion - because “Isaac Newton” thinks that it belongs in the verse as an omitted assumption. No one else here thinks such a thing.
That’s not obvious to me at all. If I say ‘I am writing a book about golfing’ then ‘a book’ is the direct object of the verb, and ‘about golfing’ is an adjectival prepositional phrase.
If I say ‘I gave the book to Tim’ then ‘Tim’ is an indirect object, I think. If you look up the subject of objects, the idea seems to be that the object is impacted by the action. Here both the book and Tim are impacted, directly or as it were indirectly. But is golfing impacted by my writing a book about it? If I write a book about nineteenth century philosophy, is that impacted? I don’t think so.
That’s why I doubt that τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς is an object of the (admittedly invisible) γράφω. But I am an amateur, just looking things up on the internet.
Andrew
Andrew - apologies for the late reply.
I must also apologise to you and others for not making things as clear as I would wish. I’m not a grammarian, and others would be better placed to explain the point more clearly, but I’ll give it a go.
Between us we’ve now built up a sizeable list of pre-placed relative clauses (many more could no doubt be found). The common thread in all of them is that the main clause is grammatically incomplete, in that it lacks an object, which is represented in the main clause solely by a demonstrative pronoun (either actual or implied) referring back to the preceding relative clause, which is where the object actually sits. In consequence, if you just read the main clause on its own in all these cases, you are left asking the question ‘who or what is the object?’ In the example from Acts 17.23, for instance, the main clause is τοῦτο ἐγὼ καταγγέλλω ὑμῖν, which makes no sense on its own - what is τοῦτο? For that you have to go back to the relative clause. All the examples of pre-placed relative clauses we have been enumerating work like this - the relative clause is absolutely essential to complete the grammatical sense of the main clause.
Isasc’s proposed sentence for verse 1 is completely different, because the main clause - [γράφω] περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς - does not lack an object, and is a grammatically self-contained statement - ’ about the Word of Life’. The understood verb governs περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς, and the statement is complete in itself; the object does not lie within the relative clause. Thus the feature common to all our other examples - that the object is not within the main clause, but within the relative clause - is absent; this is why I say that there is no grammatical connection between the two halves of Isaac’s sentence.
All the examples we have looked at work in the way I have described; not a single example in support of Isaac’s contention has so far been adduced.
I hope this clarifies things a bit - but let me know if not!
Best wishes,
John
Actually, Isaac, I think the koine speaker would expect the Ὃ to indicate the object of the forthcoming main clause - just as it does in all the other examples we have been accumulating, e.g. ὃ οὖν ἀγνοοῦντες εὐσεβεῖτε, τοῦτο ἐγὼ καταγγέλλω ὑμῖν (Acts), Ὃ γέγραφα γέγραφα (John 19.22), ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, ἐν πίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ (Galatians 2.20), etc. - not forgetting, of course, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν καὶ ἀκηκόαμεν ἀπαγγέλλομεν καὶ ὑμῖν just two verses later in this very letter!
Let’s just suppose that the hypothetical γράφω actually existed and was present (rather than having to be inferred) in your sentence. If readers saw Ὃ ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς γράφω …, wouldn’t they really expect - given how common the idiom evidently was, as evidenced by all the examples we have cited - Ὃ to be the object of γράφω? And wouldn’t they, in all likelihood, most naturally take your sentence
Ὃ ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς γράφω περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς
to mean something like
‘I write what has been from the beginning regarding the Word of Life’?
Best wishes,
John
Thanks 