Monday, July 30, 2018

John 1:1, Count Nouns & Mass Nouns in a Nutshell


A question addressed to me...with spelling errors:
> Please tell me if I get this right, but the reasoning that "a god"
> was used instead of diety, devine, or god like is because Qeos is an
> abstract noun in this case. abstract noun . A noun that denotes an
> abstract or intangible concept, such as envy or joy. (compare acts
> 28:4 ) So it would be improper to use those titles since the context
> of "Ton Qeos" was used. Denoting that the God is not intangible, but
> definatly God. (God with the definate artical The).

Reply: Rather, I might posit the view that "a god" was used to denote membership in a class, as the Grammarian Daniel Wallace points out from the Didache:

"OU PAS hO LALWN EN PNEUMATI PROPHETHS ESTIN
Not everyone who speaks in/by the Spirit is a prophet.

 In Didache 11.3-12 PROPHET... is an anarthrous PN [Predicate Nominative] five times. The focus on the passage is on anyone who claims to have membership in that elite group known as prophets."

Of course, LOVE in "God is Love" is also a similar construction, but viewed as a quality:

"The idea of a qualita­tive AGAPH is that God’s essence or nature is love, or that he has the quality of love. Thus love is an attribute, not an identification, of God." Wallace

The word PROPHET is a count noun, hence we say "a prophet."

Love is a non-count noun, so we view it as quality.

The translation "a god" demands that we view God as a count noun, the translation "Word was divine" tells us to view it as mass noun, a quality.

So we have to decide whether we view God as a count noun, or a mass (non-count) noun.

No comments:

Post a Comment