Steven Avery
Administrator
ADDED May, 2016: - Barry Hofstetter CHANGED his reasons away from constructio ad sensum to a new idea that concord is not needed because the participle "bearing witness" acts as the subject. And that the related particular noun for "witness" or "witnesses" is masculine (note that the participle could have been neuter, maintaining concord) and that causes the masculine grammar. And the connected referents (spirit, water and blood) can be anything at all. See below
To this he added what I will call the variant equivalence attempt. This argument says that if the grammar is a solecism with the earthly witnesses, the heavenly witnesses make no difference to the grammar problem.
Barry kept constructio ad sensum only in the background as a possible fallback.
First, however, let us add this (check the thread for more:
Barry argued this constructio ad sensum position even on his blug:
From some of his comments earlier, we can see the limited insight of modern lexicon grammar, compared to say that of Eugenius, a truly fluent Greek scholar.. The big issue is that of symmetry, falsely thinking that masculine and neuter are simply two sides of the coin in grammar. You can see this in his "the other way around".
Here are some of the the original approaches of Barry.
For a review of the John 10:30 irrelevant-to-this-issue grammar one spot is:
Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange
How to interpret neuter adjective “one” in John 10:30?
https://hermeneutics.stackexchange....o-interpret-neuter-adjective-one-in-john-1030
One key issue here is that Barry is still taking the "symmetry" approach. If masculine and feminine substantives can easily take neuter grammar, this means that neuter grammar can easily take masculine and feminine grammar. And he has been a classical teacher in the USA for many years, perhaps decades! He could have at least learned from Eugenius Bulgaris, who could speak ultra-fluent Greek (Barry is not fluent in the language.)
To this he added what I will call the variant equivalence attempt. This argument says that if the grammar is a solecism with the earthly witnesses, the heavenly witnesses make no difference to the grammar problem.
Barry kept constructio ad sensum only in the background as a possible fallback.
First, however, let us add this (check the thread for more:
================================Barry Hofstetter-Aug2015
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum...sid=bf70aa57214a22152ea776a94f2f36de&start=10
...there are a whole lot of exceptions to the formal rules of gender agreement. Here, I think a constructio ad sensum is the best explanation. The three are thought of as witnesses in an active sense, and so are personified with a masculine reference. It's not absolutely necessary, but it is a matter of emphasis.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter
Barry argued this constructio ad sensum position even on his blug:
======================heavenly witnesses.....
https://web.archive.org/web/2014021.../BarryHofstetter/blog/2010/10/06/1-john-5-7-8
Theology Thoughts - Barry Hofstetter
1 John 5:7-8 Wednesday, October 6, 2010 2:00:38 AM
Someone provided the following exegesis:
1 John 5:7-8 provides another example of personification of the holy spirit--this time along with "water" and "blood." 1 John 5;8 reads, "For there are three [Gr. TREIS] that bear witness, the spirit and the water and the blood; and the three [TREIS] are in agreement." "Three" is TREIS. which is either masculine or feminine. The neuter form is TRIA. Although all three nouns, viz., PNEUMA, hUDWR and hAIMA, are neuter in Greek, TREIS is used as a pronoun, not TRIA. "Bear witness" is MARTUROUNTES, masculine plural nominative of MARTUREW. The spirit, the water and the blood are all personified in this passage. It is interesting to note that in the immediately preceding verse, v. 6, we have TO PNEUMA ESTIN TO MARTUROUN ("it is the spirit that bears witness"), where the participle follows the regular grammar rule in being neuter to agree with neuter PNEUMA.To which I replied:
Yes, very interesting passage (and one, of course, with quite a textual history as well). That the Spirit is thought of as personal in nearly every context in which we find the term in the NT is practically beyond dispute, to the effect that it is not simply some sort of literary device, but a fundamental truth being communicated. I would argue here that the Spirit is placed first as the one who actually gives witness through the water and the blood instrumentally (cf. vs. 6, TO PNEUMA ESTIN TO MARTAROUN..., and the instrumental datives and prepositional phrases in vs. 6). The use of the masculine here in reference to the three neuter nouns here emphasizes the personal quality of the witness and strengthens the metaphor that the author is using. Another way to say this is the water and the blood are personified in order to emphasize the quality of the witness given through the Spirit, who is already felt to be personal.
Also, be careful of how John is actually using his syntax here. The Spirit here is also identified as "the truth" (hH ALHQEIA). Is the Spirit then simply some sort of abstraction (note the use of the article with both Spirit and truth, emphasizing the particular quality of both and their mutal identity)? In vs. 8, notice that the unity of the three masculine witnesses is then emphasized by the phrase EIS TO hEN EISEN, lit. "they are for/as the one," reminiscent of John 10:30. To say "the one" here emphasizes the concrete nature of the unity of the witness, which is ultimately from God through Christ (vs. 9).
From some of his comments earlier, we can see the limited insight of modern lexicon grammar, compared to say that of Eugenius, a truly fluent Greek scholar.. The big issue is that of symmetry, falsely thinking that masculine and neuter are simply two sides of the coin in grammar. You can see this in his "the other way around".
Here are some of the the original approaches of Barry.
"The other way around" begs the question. Eugenius points out that the "flip-side" is irrelevant to the discordance of neuter substantives with masculine or feminine grammar. Thus nobody claims there is a solecism here.Yahoogroups - 11/21/2009 - WhichVersion
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/whichversion/conversations/messages/33920
Barry Hofstetter
... notice that you have in 5:7 (N-A) a masculine plural subject, followed in 5:8 by three neuter singular examples. The grammatical agreement with these in Greek is fairly relaxed, and can easily be explained by the personifying of the subjects as witnesses. For an example the other way around, see John 10:30, "I and my Father are one,", where "I" and "Father" are masculine, and the Greek word for "one" (εἰς, hEIS) is neuter singular (ἕν), rather than masculine (ἕνα).
For a review of the John 10:30 irrelevant-to-this-issue grammar one spot is:
Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange
How to interpret neuter adjective “one” in John 10:30?
https://hermeneutics.stackexchange....o-interpret-neuter-adjective-one-in-john-1030
======================================================https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/whichversion/conversations/messages/33934
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/whichversion/conversations/messages/33947
> Why would water, spirt and blood be personified ?
Why not? They are described as witnesses (an extremely important theme in the Johannine corpus).
> Without getting into a big discussion about the meaning of spirit in 1
> John 5:8 (although that is a fascinating topic), please give some examples
> of the personification of water and blood.
The flaw in your assumption is that there needs to be a parallel to
establish the usage. Here, the usage is established by the sense of the passage.
> John 10:30
> I and my Father are one.
>
> If A. T. Robinson, Murray Harris and David J. Ellis are correct that the
> neuter is the only proper representation of the unity of essence (or
> nature or will or purpose or action) rather than absolute identity (and
> this seems rather clear despite some attempts to read more into the verse)
> then the grammar of this verse has absolutely nothing to do with
> personalizing or non-personalization.
>
> Dr. James E. Talmage :
> “In the original Greek “one” appears in the neuter gender, and therefore
> expresses oneness in attributes, power, or purpose, and not a oneness of
> personality which would have required the masculine form” (Jesus the
> Christ, p. 465).
This last guy was a Mormon (a very famous one, actually), who specialized in the the sciences. How that qualifies him as a Greeks scholar, I don't know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Talmage
Secondly, my point was not about personal or non-personal, but that the "agreement" in such contexts is not according to the strict rules of grammar, but ad sensum, "according to the sense." My thinking on this to date is that it has more to do with how plural are expressed as "one" linguistically speaking than about any profound statements concerning "essence" or "purpose." Those ideas must be derived from context and the meta-perspective of the author. Another factor rarely taken into account is that individual authors will themselves vary in such expressions, and it can be difficult to establish hard and fast rules.
Speaking of parallels, do any of your authors provide support for their statements? I would like to see examples where there is a clear distinction in meaning between the use of the masculine vs. the neuter. I've seen such assertions made before, but I've never seen it proven, only asserted.
One key issue here is that Barry is still taking the "symmetry" approach. If masculine and feminine substantives can easily take neuter grammar, this means that neuter grammar can easily take masculine and feminine grammar. And he has been a classical teacher in the USA for many years, perhaps decades! He could have at least learned from Eugenius Bulgaris, who could speak ultra-fluent Greek (Barry is not fluent in the language.)
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