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Ἑλληνιστὶ γινώσκεις; — (Acts 21:37b)
This blog is all about reading, understanding, translating the Greek New Testament. My essays here are not necessarily disciplined, definitive articles. They are musings, observations, puzzlings, popping-offs, speculations, complaints, pronouncements, questions. I hope other students of the Greek New Testament will join in the Comments, to our mutual growth in understanding this God-breathed marvel.
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About Me
- DJP
- I'm a Calvi dispie bapto gelical. One God, sixty-six books, five points, seven dispensations (+/-), five sola's, one wife, four children, four cats, no fooling.
10 comments:
Isn't grammatically possible that Thomas was just using the nominative as an exclamation, rather than addressing Jesus?
He then would no doubt have followed up with addressing Jesus personally [e.g., "You really ARE alive, kurie! I'm sorry I doubted you. Oh, now everybody's going to call me doubting Thomas."], but it's the exclamation that is recorded?
We do the equivalent in English all the time.
Hey Terry.
Well, I'm sure you know that all sorts of bizarre things can be grammatically possible in any language, that are contextually impossible.
If I'm understanding you, I'd say what I think you're suggesting is contextually — not just unlikely, but — impossible.
The first five Greek words, translated "Thomas answered and said to Him," place it beyond reasonable doubt that Thomas addresses these words to Jesus.
If he isn't, he's taking God's name in vain in a way I think unparalleled in any Biblical passage. If that is what Thomas was doing, Jesus would hardly have pronounced him blessed (v. 29).
And instead of Doubting Thomas we should call him Cussing Thomas.
"Thomas answered and said to Him..."
Duh. Thanks.
By the way, feel free to ramp up this blog big time.
I know you have nothing else on your plate :)
Yes, Terry, I'll get right on that.
(c;
BTW, I made comments on Mounce's post, but those metas are moderated I think, and it may or may not ever appear.
Hey DJP, your comment is showing up on Mounce's blog at this time. And thanks for keeping THIS blog alive!
I'll second these suggestions to keep this blog going. I'm learning Greek right now and loving it.
Me too, and we're using Mounce's book! :) I didn't know he had a blog, I'll have to check it out and tell my professor.
I think most would agree that this could simply just be a nominative used as vocative. One reason it could be different is because most times Jesus is addressed as kurie, the speaker is simply stating Christ's title before they speak. (Kurie, blah blah blah).
However, if we were to make Thomas' statement a complete sentence, it would read "YOU ARE my Lord and my God." The verb is understood. In this case, you grammatically don't use the vocative, so the Nominative makes perfect sense because it’s the object of the copulative verb.
Either way, it doesn’t change the meaning. I just wanted to note this construction is different than most of the vocatives we see.
For some reason, this meta keep attracting spam for (I guess) Asian porn. Who knew they were into Greek? At any rate, I'll close the meta, see if that puts an end to it.
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