B. W. wrote:John 1:3 παντα δι αυτου εγενετο και χωρις αυτου εγενετο ουδε εν ο γεγονεν
Unrelated to the converastion, but as an aside, this is one of those passages that vexes me to no end. I cannot for the life of me decide if ο γεγονεν is the end of sentence or if it is the beginning of the next. Should it be, "all things were created through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being
which has come into being. In Him was life . . ."; or should it be, "all thinsg were created through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being. That which comes into being in Him was life . . ."
Most translators prefer the first because, frankly, it's easier to make sense of. But I can't get the second reading out of my head. The latter feels a lot more like John's normal mode of thought. Take, for instance, the popular John 3:16. Here's the relevant portion:
- πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν μὴ ἀπόληται ἀλλὰ ἔχῃ ζωὴν αἰώνιον
See ὁ πιστεύων followed by the εἰς αὐτὸν ? That's the exact same stucture as in 1:3c-4a. Granted we have εἰς rather than εν, but there is such a large amount of semantic overlap between those two words they may as well be parallel in structure. On the other hand, you do have verses like Joh 14:2a, which says:
- ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τοῦ πατρός μου μοναὶ πολλαί εἰσιν
So here, the ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ is the same structure as 1:4a -- the sentence starts with ἐν, is followed by the object, then the subject, and then the verb. I can see precedents for both views.
I'm going to have a converastion with my friend Tom, who did doctoral work in linguistics, to ask him what kind of tools might be helpful for coming to some sort of resolution on this. I still lean towards the minority view, not only because it just "feels" more Johannine, but because I also think it gives us a better balance of the verse itself. Notice the contrast:
- παντα δι αυτου εγενετο
και
χωρις αυτου εγενετο ουδε εν
That looks pretty convincing to me. Adding the extra ο γεγονεν throws off the balance. So taken, we could paraphrase the translation just a bit to bring out the strength of it as something like
- Everything came into being through Him.
Absolutely nothing came into being apart from Him.
For non-Greek readers, I assume the parallelism is easier to see with such a translation. Of course, the problem here is that while this is so much easier, you've now made 1:4 much more difficult: "That which came into being in Him was life, and the life was the light of men."
Anyway, carry on with your regularly scheduled program.
