In THE beginning (5)

Awww, these arche posts are KILLING my stats. Sorry, I promise to leave it soon, I just don't want to leave it unfinished OK? I think this one and then one more and I should be done :)

We are in a series of posts which explore the way in which the word arche functions in the Bible, in order to show that it is absolutely no accident or surprise that John's prologue commences without the definite article "the", which we are later required to add back in English. All of this prepares the way for what I hope one day will be an exploration into the murky world or the anarthrous (article-free) "theos" in John 1:1c. But if I have learned one lesson from my stats, my blog will  most definitely not be the place to give blow-by-blow accounts for that! The image, by the way, is a pictorial reminder that the meanings of ruler and rule, which are also contained in arche in some contexts, can predictably affect the inclusion of the definite article differently to when arche refers to THE beginning.

So let us continue.

Now we have established the New Testament state of the feminine singular usage of arche, which includes both the nominative and dative Greek cases, let us now shift gear to arches. Arches is still feminine singular, but this time it is in the genitive case, indicating possession, or “of” or deriving from [the beginning]. This is by far the most common construction in the New Testament, which provides us with no less than 27 instances, John in particular loves it (...from [THE] beginning). 23 of these 27 are translated THE beginning even though there is no article. Authors concerned are Matthew (19:4, 19:8, 24:21), Mark (10:6, 13:9), Luke (Luke 1:2, Acts 26:4), John (John 6:64, 8:44, 15:27, 16:4; 1 John 1:1, 2:7, 2:13, 2:14, 2:24a, 2:24b, 3:8, 3:11; 2 John 1:5, 1:6), Pauline (2 Thessalonians 2:13), Petrine (2 Peter 3:4). The exceptions here obey the same idea as before: either meaning “rule” (Ephesians 1:21 and Colossians 2:10) or a special case of Hebrews (5:12, 6:1), to which we will return.

There is one more singular case we have not yet tackled, and it's tricky: the accusative, archen. Here we have 9 examples: John 2:11, John 8:25, 1 Corinthians 15:24, Hebrews 2:3, Hebrews 3:14, Hebrews 7:3, Jude 1:6. In these nine examples we see that the accusative singular seems to affect the need for the article, because the noun “beginning” is actually predicating something else, rendering it in several examples “first”. E.g. John 2:11 in the NIV reads: “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs [i.e. the first sign] through which he revealed his glory”. 

This first of the nine instances should however be excluded from the study because of textual disagreement. I initially thought and blogged that it did not have the article. But as I looked at the Greek "apparatus", that is to say the strength of manuscript reliability for this verse, (that I could not easily account for), it hit me: there is a textual argument for the inclusion in John 2:11 of the article, which would maybe make more sense in the context of the accusative case. RP Byzantine Majority Text 2005, Textus Receptus, Greek Orthodox Church 1904 all witness a written definite article. 

Hebrews 2:3 is our first instance of relatively textually undisputed texts of the singular accusative. The Hebrews author, as I keep hinting, is exceptional in the way he articulates ARCHE. Here, however, he omits the article in order to say “first announced” (a few older or literal translations preferring “a commencement” etc. are most clearly off the mark and also constitute a very small minority). Notice how announced is not a noun, unlike the first sign in John 2:11.

Curiously, John 8:25 and Hebrews 3:14 are articular while providing a similar meaning. Why would Hebrews 2:3 differ from 3:14, and John 2:11 from 8:25 if in both cases they are identical words and case and by the same author? Good question, I don't know exactly. But they must not be grouped together in this way. John is thus far extraordinarily consistent in his anarthrous use of arche (nominative and dative) and arches (genitive). John always expresses “the beginning” without the article. So the first question is why would he in 8:25 exceptionally include the article when in the dozens of other occurrences it is always avoided? I am not sure. A truly thorough word study would need to look into that further.

Notwithstanding the final remarks reserved for the author of Hebrews, the final Hebrews occurrence of 7:3 seems to be anarthrous for it does truly (and rarely) refer to an indefinite beginning: Melchizedek had neither “a beginning” nor “an end” (nor “a father nor a mother”).

1 Corinthians does lack the article but is talking about “all rule”, and finally, Jude is anarthrous in a similar way to the John 2 and Hebrews 3 examples (predicate nouns, which appear to defer article usage to the predicated noun).

In summary: If we were working from the accusative alone, we would clearly be unable to make much progress! It does however contribute to the emerging picture on Hebrews and does open the tricky issue of predicate noun behaviour which will concern, one day, any study into John 1:1c.

In THE beginning (4) [updated 11/1/16]

So now we turn away from identical occurrences to the other feminine singular arche constructions (we will not spend any more time on the LXX from now on).

First let us look at the other feminine singular examples that we excluded last time since they lacked the preposition “en”. As we do this, we will discover an additional meaning of the word. For whereas we always translate en arche by “in the beginning” in English, arche (and other cases) can sometimes mean “rule” or even “ruler”. Here then are the other New Testament examples of arche without “en”:

Matthew 24:8 and Mark 13:8 (nominative singular)
GRK: δὲ ταῦτα ἀρχὴ ὠδίνων 
NAS: these things are [the] beginning of birth pangs

Mark 1:1 (nominative singular)
GRK: ΑΡΧΗ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου
NAS: [The] beginning of the gospel of Jesus

EXCEPTION Luke 20:20 (dative singular)
GRK: αὐτὸν τῇ ἀρχῇ καὶ τῇ
NAS: that they [could] deliver Him to the rule and the authority

EXCEPTION? Colossians 1:18 (nominative singular)
GRK: ἐστιν [ἡ] ἀρχή πρωτότοκος ἐκ
NAS: the church; and He is the/[the] beginning, the firstborn

EXCEPTION Revelation 3:14 (nominative singular)
GRK: ἀληθινός ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κτίσεως
NAS: Witness, the Beginning of the creation

EXCEPTION Revelation 21:6 & 22:13 (nominative singular)
GRK:  ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ…
NAS: the beginning and the end.

My assurances of consistent dropping of the article are looking seriously doubtful on the face evidence of these passages. Of the 8 other feminine singular arche verses, only three seem to maintain the “rule” that the “the” is implied and not written: that’s less than half.

No it’s not. So far we have seen an actual total of 12 feminine singular occurrences: 7 of these imply the article silently. Of these 7, 4 state “en arche”. Still, you might say 7 out of 12 is still not that impressive evidence. Actually, it is meaningless. We have already established that exact matches are 100% consistent. It could well be argued that without the preposition “en”, that the definite article is simply optional. As a Greek writer of antiquity, you could throw it in or leave it out and no-one would mind or notice either way. My case would not be jeopardised.

But, despite that safety net, we can actually connect the articles to a specific function in at least three of the five “exceptions”. Furthermore, as we look at other configurations of arche, we will see that a very strong case will still emerge for anarthrous arche notwithstanding the exempting circumstances we will look at now.

Firstly, Luke 20:20, is consistently translated into English by “rule”, not “beginning”. In a later post we will do a study on the Greek words for “ruler”, whereupon we will see that this meaning is highly obedient to the more common rules: anarthrous = indefinite & articular = definite. So Luke 20:20 is constructed with the article because “the rule” behaves differently to “the beginning”.

Secondly, Colossians 1:18. Unfortunately this verse will not get us very far, as the manuscripts do not agree: some have the definite article, and some don't. Furthermore, the presence or absence is not strongly contended by textual critics who focus their energies elsewhere so it is difficult to say more than the immediate appearance is that both options are viable. For me it is also impossible to decide.

If the article is present, arche might well be functioning qualitatively or again as “the ruler”. See how in Greek it immediately precedes the word for “firstborn”. In English we separate the two with a comma (“…he is the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead”), but this qualitative use could allow for the article to be attached to "the firstborn" rather than "the beginning". However, an even more plausible explanation can be found, in my eyes, when we integrate how arche is generally used in in this epistle. Bearing in mind the shrinking numbers of New Testament scholars still attributing the epistle to genuine Pauline authorship, we should not take lightly that ALL the other declinations of arche in Colossians refer to rule, rulers, principalities, and so on. Colossians 1:18 would be the only exception. If this case were to be worked out more fully, then a translation could legitimately go more along the lines of he is the ruler and the firstborn from among the dead. In either case, the inclusion of the article could thus be explained. 

If the article is not present, then Colossians 1:18 would definitely read THE beginning and would be in line with the overall New Testament usage that we are observing.

The final explicable articular arche is Revelation 3:14. This time, a whole swathe of translations also make the connection with the idea of “the ruler” or “the head”: ERV, EXB, ICB, NCV, NIRV, NIV, WEB, YLT. The NIV gives: “the ruler of God’s creation”. Interestingly, The Message has chosen to echo Proverbs 8 language and go with the qualitative “first”, which is probably not quite right.

So in actual fact we are only really left with one phrase from the very end of the last book of the Bible, in Revelation 21:6 and 22:13: “the beginning and the end”, where both "beginning" and "end" are articular. I would not want to presumptuously assume that there is in fact nothing to be said about the articular use here. One possibility that will later emerge when we look at Hebrews is that within the writings of one author, a preferred expression might be adopted for particular purposes. On the assumption that it is at least possible, many would say distinctly possible, that the author of Revelation may not be the same human being as the author of John’s gospel, we might note that there are simply no occurrences of anarthrous arche in any declination, whether meaning beginning or rule/ruler. Another explanation might be an attempt at keeping the powerful statement balanced; could it not have appeared strange to emphasise the article of “the end” while omitting the article of “the beginning”?

To sum up: without the preposition, the singular arche does not follow the implied article rule when used to mean “rule” or qualitatively. Usage in Revelation is too limited to develop but opens the possibility to author preference.

This concludes my discussion on the singular noun construction for nominative and dative cases, but it should just be noted before closing the post that Greek case does not yet appear determinant. Of the anarthrous instances of arche with implied article, we see represented both dative and nominative cases, although nominative presents more articular instances (it is interesting to note that the nominative Mark 1:1, while lacking the “en” is being used to initiate Mark’s account in much the same way as “en arche” in the four New Testament examples and Genesis 1:1 & Jeremiah 26:1 in the LXX). We will continue to track this as we proceed now to the other two Greek cases for this word: genitive (very consistently dropping the article) and accusative (difficult to track).

In THE beginning (3)

So far I have set out my conclusion that the lack of article in John 1:1 before “beginning” is normal despite the fact that we translate it into modern languages with the definite article. It’s time to see what I base that on and how we can deal with the few exceptions.

The first place to start is to ask ourselves: do we see the exact phrase en arche ever separated by the definite article? Here, where it matters most, we have total agreement: no. This expression is simply the way to express “In the beginning” and our three other biblical examples include the author in question, John, as well as both Paul and Luke. These are the New Testament examples (I will briefly cover the LXX afterward), all of which are in the dative case like John 1:

NO ARTICLE John 1:1 N-DFS
GRK: ΕΝ ΑΡΧΗ ἦν ὁ
NAS: In the beginning was the Word,
KJV: In the beginning was the Word,
INT: In [the] beginning was the

NO ARTICLE John 1:2 (dative singular)
GRK: ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν
NAS: He was in [the] beginning with God.

NO ARTICLE Acts 11:15 (dative singular)
GRK: ἡμᾶς ἐν ἀρχῇ 
KJV: …us at [the] beginning.

NO ARTICLE Philippians 4:15 (dative singular)
GRK: ὅτι ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου
KJV: in [the] beginning of the gospel,

This might seem like scant evidence – do not worry! There is much more to come as we widen out to other cases and configurations. But here we have four exact matches (including John 1:1) across three of the most represented New Testament authors, John, Paul and Luke.

What about the LXX, the Greek translation of the Old Testament? Are there any instances of an articular arche in this form, i.e. en + article + arche ? Here we must concede one, and it is obscure. It is in Daniel 9:21, and is not translated as “in the beginning” at all. 

Firstly, I do not have access to textual variations on article inclusion/exclusion for Daniel 9:21 in the LXX. Scribes definitely do play around with articles a little in subsequent centuries so it is a possibility that the articular version we read today was not originally articular.

Secondly, when you look up the Hebrew word used in Daniel here, בַּתְּחִלָּה֙ it is not the same word as used in the Hebrew, original, version of Genesis 1:1 בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית, to which all scholars would agree there is at least some connection for John’s prologue writer. And yes, before you ask, the LXX also does indeed commence Genesis with the anarthrous “En arche” (no article). The Hebrew used for this idea is found in three other locations in the Old Testament, all of them in Jeremiah. However, only one of these, Jeremiah 26:1, is translated in the LXX as “En arche”. The other two Jeremiah references seem to show evidence of serious textual corruptions, I presume, into the Septuagint tradition because the book of Jeremiah seems to differ generally and significantly beyond this point between the Hebrew and its Greek translation. I should look into this more, but it is no longer of relevance to the current investigation.

So far, so good: En arche in Greek = In THE beginning.

But that should not satisfy, as we need to look at arche in its other forms and without the preposition “en”, which could affect how the need for the article applies is in Greek. However, we shall see that there too, a distinctive pattern will still emerge, albeit with a few more explainable exceptions.

In THE beginning (2)

In the previous post I established that the key question in understanding a word is not why, but how or when. I already informed you that I am also particularly interested in the Greek word arché, which has been understood to mean various things from beginning, the beginning, first (adjective function), corner, principality, rule, ruler. That's quite a swathe.

I am particularly curious about this word because of John 1:1 and John 1:2, where it is sometimes argued (and I certainly thought) that we cannot develop sophisticated grammatical ideas on the critical anarthrous (article-free) theos in John 1:1 because Greek articles are basically unpredictable.
In English, if we want to show that a noun is not just any old one of that thing, but it is the thing in view, we must add the article "the". In plural form, that "the" becomes "these" or "those". You know that. In Greek, the word "the" has a gazillion different variants because the Greek language functions with cases. When it is used, the author is being just as specific as we are with our definite articles.

That said, it sometimes is used when we would not, because for us proper nouns, like "Mary" already carry that specific unique sense - unless of course there are two ladies called Mary in view, and one specific Mary needs identification: (pointing to a photo) "This is the Mary you met, she is called Mary Jones; the other Mary is Mary Smith.

New Testament Greek varies here: sometimes "Jesus" has the definite article, which in English is totally superfluous since we do not have two "Jesuses" in view. Another example is God: ho theos, the One True God, whom many Trinitarian scholars will concede is God the Father (there are no tripersonal usages of "theos" or "ho theos" to my knowledge in the New Testament). See John 17:3 for a great example.

And what about the indefinite article? In English, when a noun is indefinite, we simply add "a", "an" or "some", n'est-ce pas? "I picked up a pebble to toss into the sea". Well here in Greek there is a big shift, because they simply add... NOTHING!

So the temptation can be to say, well, because this or that noun has no article, it is therefore indefinite. That is what the Jehovah's Witnesses have basically done, it would seem, with the anarthrous theos in John 1:1. So they say: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a god. And of course the Christian world goes into uproar at this because of the way JWs have "meddled" with the text. (By the way, I am not convinced at all by JW theology, I only care what the Bible - and Biblical authors - taught and thought). Careful Christians, I unashamedly like to consider myself in this group, also note that they did not start their translation of John's prologue with: "Once upon a time", i.e. in a beginning. We say: surely those JWs must have been allowing their theology to bias their exegesis here, because for the first anarthrous noun, which is arché; they add the THE: In THE beginning, while the anarthrous theos connected to the Word, the logos, is "demoted" to "a god". Could you be any more inconsistent?!

This is how the verse looks with its articles:

In [the] beginning was THE word and THE word was with THE God and [the?] God was THE word.

I am now going to steer away from the highly sensitive anarthrous theos question, and focus on this word arché. Could it be that in my own dislike for some of JW theology and bias, that I was clutching at arguments like the anarthrous arché? Yes, that is precisely what happened.

In the next post I will start to show how the omission of the definite article before arché is ABSOLUTELY NORMAL AND CONSISTENT. There is nothing random about it and it is utterly consistent with how this word arché can be seen to function throughout the New Testament, and even in the Septuagint (LXX). What that means is that if we had significant textual variation in the manuscripts between "In the beginning" and "In [the] beginning", i.e. we didn't know what the prologue originally said, then we would very confidently deduce that an early copyist had changed the text he was copying, inadvertently or deliberately, to ADD the definite article, not to delete it.

That was just a hypothetical textual variation by the way! The manuscripts agree: no article.

At some other stage, maybe, I will delve into the anarthrous theos question, but it is a much bigger project. One argument that will be scrapped however is the necessary unpredictability of usage of articles based on the anarthrous arché in the same verse.

The over-importance of "he" in John 1:2

Some folk stress huge importance here of "he" rather than "the one" (see KJV and others), it is described as a "correction" for John 1:2. They probably should not stake so much on this tweak in my view. Four points should be born in mind:

1. Of course the pre-existance of Jesus feels much more real with a "he", but the KJV hardly inspired a generation of unitarian theology because of its "this one" back in the early 16th century.

2. Unitarians do not have an issue with poetic personification. Their clearest example of this, they would say, is found in the feminine personification of Wisdom in Proverbs 8. Yes she really is a she!

3. The word translated as "he", Οὗτος, is - I do not think it can be disputed - most commonly translated this or this one. Since it can also be translated "it", and "she", as well as "he", we still need to be careful not to overstate the pre-existent (male) Jesus.

4. Of the four tranlsations I checked in French, all state "elle" [she] and not "il" [he], because the Greek is so clearly referring to the LOGOS, which in French is the feminine word Parole.

My conclusion is that the "he" emphasis is a clear overstatement in English that both the Greek and the French bring us back to the author's intention, to restate the one in question is the word.

Articles (I)

Articles are complex. Even in English we are not always sure why and when we use them. Even as I write this I can see: WARNING: STAND CLEAR OF HAZARD AREAS WHILE ENGINE IS RUNNING

We do not understand from this anarthrous sentence that people are warned against standing too close to SOME hazard areas, or just AN engine of the aeroplane. We all understand that we are to steer clear of all the hazard areas relative to the engine! In professional translation work, I have previously been required to use these anarthrous constructions. That brings us in to the next example:

French: 
J'habite en France
Vive la France!

In French, if we do not have a preposition like "en" (in), we often need the definite article: "he comes from France" is most accurately stated "il vient de la France", and "France is going to win!" is most assuredly "c'est la France qui va gagner! "But in English we are, perhaps more like the Greeks, somewhat happier to part ways with our definite articles.

I live in England
Long live England! England is going to win!

This introduction can serve us as a word of caution as we tiptoe with trepidation toward John 1:1.