Jaguar Prince

Let us with infinite patience clear up the misunderstandings around this question of attributive and predicate adjectives and the relationship between this question and that of defining/restrictive and unrestrictive/non defining relative clauses.

A the stupid scholar
B the scholar who is stupid (a tautology most of the time)

As Smyth ( a guy who has written an authoritative Classical Greek grammar) rightly points out, relative clauses play the same role as attributive adjectives. In English, an attributive adjective is one that occurs before the noun it describes. An attributive adjective is one that appears in the attributive position.

To take another, less controversial example, 'the kind man' can be transformed into 'the man who is kind' and 'the man who is kind' can be transformed into 'the kind man'.

Let us note that in some languages, the relative clause (or what appears to be a relative clause from the point of view of languages that have this construct) appears before the antecedent. This is the case in Chinese and Japanese (yours truly is a Chinese translator).

Wo renshi de ren= the man I know=I know man (Chinese order!)

wo renshi=I know
de=whom
ren=man

This can also happen in Greek in some rather rare cases (not a single occurrence in the Bible at any rate!). But in general, they appear after the noun they modify (in predicate position, if you will, but they are still similar to attributive adjectives)

What about predicate adjectives?

The exegete is ignorant

is an example of a predicate adjective (and of a tautology), an adjective which occurs after the noun it describes. In between, there is the verb 'to be'. In some languages, the verb can be omitted altogether. Greek is one of those languages, with Hebrew, Arabic and Chinese.

The exegete ignorant

could reflect a Greek sentence!

Now can this kind of adjectives be transformed into a relative clause?

The scholar is who is ignorant ?

It can't.

Therefore Smyth, who says that all relative clauses are attributive adjectives, is absolutely right, by Jove! There is no such thing as a 'predicate relative clause', which is the same as saying that there are no relative clauses occurring in the predicate position.

Therefore relative clauses=attributive adjectives.

This is the first point one needs to grasp.

What is the relationship between this question and that of defining/non defining relative clauses?

At first I thought there wasn't any link, but in fact there is a very tenuous one:

The short man=the man who is short

'the man who is short' is a defining/restrictive relative clause

the man, who is short,

How shall we analyze this undefining/unrestrictive relative clause?

Let us note first that the man, who is short cannot stand on itself. You need to add something.

The man, who is short, is a good basketball player.

This could be transformed into:

The man is short but he is a good basketball player.

The man is short is a statement that contains a predicate adjective. That's the sole link. :huh: Carlson's case is as flimsy and pregnable as Darwin's.

(Smyth, by the way, says that ordinary relative clauses are independent explanatory clauses. This statement is clearly vindicated by my analysis above. Another way to make this clear is to break the relative like this:

I know the man and he is a doctor=I know a man who is a doctor. )

If we compare:

the man who is short is a good basketball player

with

the man, who is short, is a good basketball player

We come to realize that the undefining relative clause in B tells us something that defines and describes the basketball player in a way which is somehow less essential than in sentence A. In fact, B could be transformed into

The man, although he is short, is a good basketball player.

Let us note also that A seems to imply that there are several men present and that the speaker is picking up one of them as the good basketball player in the presence of his interlocutor. B does not carry these implications. No one needs to be there in addition to the speaker and his hearer and the information imparted is one that is unessential. This last point can be seen clearly in the following example:

The man, who is drunk(=although he is drunk), is a good basketball player.

Let us now return to the question of whether there is a link between defining/undefining relative clauses and the question of the position of adjectives. As should be clear from the above, there is none.

if we found

the man who is short is a good basketball player

knowing that the author never punctuates his sentences, we would simply not be able to say whether a comma is necessary or not if we didn't have any context. But the meaning would be different. The same is true in Greek, no matter what SC Carlson may say to the contrary.

Let us examine John 20:2 once more, in the light of the above:

She (courageous Mary) runs to Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved

this has been rendered as

A She runs to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved.
B She runs to the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved.
C She runs to the other disciple whom Jesus loved.

A: A is more or less absurd. The definite article before 'disciple' obliges us to look for the nearest mention of a disciple of Jesus and this is Joseph of Arimathea (it could also be Mary Magdalen)! The undefining relative clause tells us as an incidental/accidental detail that Jesus loved him (at the time of the meeting).

A in fact could be transformed into

She runs to the other disciple, because/although/since/when he was loved by Jesus

The disciple was loved by Jesus and/but/therefore/then she ran to him (to tell him the body had disappeared)

There is no way to know with certainty that this disciple is the same as the one mentioned in 19:26 or in 13:23.

Conclusion: The undefining clause creates complete confusion.

B: B is special in that it contains a new antecedent (='the one'), which helps dissipate the confusion of the undefining relative clause in A (the relative clause in B is defining!), but this is done in complete disregard for the simplicity of the Greek original which doesn't contain anything resembling or equivalent to 'the one' in English. Had there been something like "ekeinos" or "outos", things would have been different, but this is not the case.

For an example where 'the one' should be added to the relative pronoun and could be said to be implicit in the relative pronoun itself, please see John 4:18:

nun on exeis=
the one whom you have now (is not your husband)

But structurally John 20:2 is completely different.

Therefore what we have in NKJV and other translations is overtranslation by people who think they know better than 'John' who he is talking about! :down:

Conclusion: B is out.

C: Well, obviously in light of what I have said, this is the most plausible translation, the one which is both the most accurate in view of the Greek text, the most consonant with the principle of Ockham's cardboard cutter, the most correct one with respect to the context and the English language, but it is also the one which is the most disturbing for orthodoxy, whether Christian or non Christian (non Christian orthodoxy being as bigoted as the Christian one). Therefore it has very little chance to be recognized, but truth is what it is no matter how many people and who sees it.

If some people still cling to Carlsonian illusions I advise them to take a look at John 4:14

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

These two relative clauses are structurally identical to the one found in John 20:2 and they were translated as defining relative clauses by all translators

John 4:14

But according to some self-proclaimed authorities here, they should be translated as undefining relative clauses.

But whosoever drinketh of the water, which I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water, which I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

Of course, one can continue to deceive oneself by saying that in reality the defining clauses are udefining in the mind of the translators because written English doesn't make a clear distinction between the two and is nonchalant in matters of punctuation, blablablablablabla... :huh: :wave:

Oh yeah!

Jag

Jaguar Prince

I wish someone who is competent and open-minded could discuss this exegetical problem with me again and give me some fresh insights.