A Textual Commentary On The Greek NT

John 1:3,4

John 1:3-4 ouvde. e[n) o] ge,gonen evn {B}

Should the words o] ge,gonen be joined with what goes before or with what follows? The oldest manuscripts (î^{66, 75*} a* A B) have no punctuation here, and in any case the presence of punctuation in Greek manuscripts, as well as in versional and patristic sources, cannot be regarded as more than the reflection of current exegetical understanding of the meaning of the passage.

A majority of the Committee was impressed by the consensus of ante-Nicene writers (orthodox and heretical alike) who took o] ge,gonen with what follows. When, however, in the fourth century Arians and the Macedonian heretics began to appeal to the passage to prove that the Holy Spirit is to be regarded as one of the created things, orthodox writers preferred to take o] ge,gonen with the preceding sentence, thus removing the possibility of heretical use of the passage.

The punctuation adopted for the text is in accord with what a majority regarded as the rhythmical balance of the opening verses of the Prologue, where the climactic or “staircase” parallelism seems to demand that the end of one line should match the beginning of the next. ¹

[On the other hand, however, none of these arguments is conclusive and other considerations favor taking o] ge,gonen with the preceding sentence. Thus, against the consideration of the so-called rhythmical balance (which after all is present in only a portion of the Prologue, and may not necessarily involve o] ge,gonen) must be set John’s fondness for beginning a sentence or clause with evn and a demonstrative pronoun (cf. John 13:35; John 15:8; John 16:26; 1 John 2:3, 1 John 2:4, 1 John 2:5; 1 John 3:10, 1 John 3:16, 1 John 3:19, 1 John 3:24; 1 John 4:2, etc.). It was natural for Gnostics, who sought support from the Fourth Gospel for their doctrine of the origin of the Ogdoad, to take o] ge,gonen with the following sentence (“That which has been made in him was life” — whatever that may be supposed to mean). ² It is more consistent with the Johannine repetitive style, as well as with Johannine doctrine (cf. John 5:26, John 5:39; John 6:53), to say nothing concerning the sense of the passage, to punctuate with a full stop after o] ge,gonen. B.M.M.]

¹ For discussions in support of taking o] ge,gonen with what follows, see K. Aland, “Über die Bedeutung eines Punktes. (Eine Untersuchung zu Joh. 1, 3 4),” in Studies in the History and Text of the New Testament in Honor of Kenneth Willis Clark, ed. by Boyd L. Daniels and M. Jack Suggs (= Studies and Documents, XXIX; Salt Lake City, 1967), pp. 161—187 (an expanded form of the study appeared in Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, LIX [1968], pp. 174—209), and Ed. L. Miller, Salvation-History in the Prologue of John. The Significance of John 1:3/4 (Leiden, 1989), pp. 17—44.

² Despite valiant attempts of commentators to bring sense out of taking o] ge,gonen with what follows, the passage remains intolerably clumsy and opaque. One of the difficulties that stands in the way of ranging the clause with evn auvtw|/ zwh. h=n is that the perfect tense of ge,gonen would require evstin instead of h=n (see also the comment on 1.4).

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A Textual Commentary On The Greek NT

John 1:3,4

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