Need Expert Syntax Search Help

I have a search need for my dissertation that is beyond my query construction abilities.

I am hoping that someone might be able to help me.

Here is my question:

Whether the subject of the verb δίδωμι is Jesus or God in John 3:34b is a matter of debate.

Some argue that Jesus should be the subject based on the fact that pronominal phrase ὃν ἀπέστειλεν ὁ θεὸς referring to Jesus is the subject of λαλέω in 34a.

I don't find this convincing for several reasons (primarily because Father is subject of loves in v. 35) but I would love to find out if there are any other similar constructions where there is a pronominal phrase that is clearly the subject of a verb preceding a clause whose subject is not defined.

Does that make sense?

Any ideas? Would this be possible using a syntactical search?
I don't know enough about the mechanics of the tool to know where to start.

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Comments

davidphillips

Russ,

I just had a few minutes and tried to put something together. I haven't really looked through the results except to make sure John 3:34 was there and to make sure the first result made sense.

I went about the search by looking at John 3:34 and trying to replicate in general what was happening there. I would have liked to use a second unordered group for the relative pronoun and subject instead of using the OR operator, but for some reason the search failed (can we not put unordered groups inside unordered groups?).

The search is looking for every place where the subject of a clause contains an embedded clause. This embedded clause must contain a relative pronoun and it must contain a subject (that is, it must be a relative clause containing an explicit subject). The unordered group allows the subject and predicator to come in either order.

The search yields 12 results. I offer no guarantee as to their appropriatness to your question [;)].

Russ Quinn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/85596#Comment_85596

David,

Thanks for the suggestion. I will try to replicate it.

Russ Quinn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/85610#Comment_85610

I successfully executed the search and got twelve results also.

I think this confirms that the construction of John 3:34 is unique in the NT.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/85620#Comment_85620

I think this confirms that the construction of John 3:34 is unique in the NT.

Hi Russ,

I constructed a Concordia Syntax Search modelled on Jn 3.34 and looking to satisfy the second part of your requirement (with a clause whose subject is not defined). It comes up with 1 Cor 15:36 and Jn 3:34 only. But Jn 6:37 is also a candidate.

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/86777#Comment_86777

I constructed a Concordia Syntax Search

C'mon Dave, don't bogart it...post a screen shot so we all can give it a shot.. [:D]

Rick Brannan (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/85620#Comment_85620

Hi Russ.

I successfully executed the search and got twelve results also.

I think this confirms that the construction of John 3:34 is unique in the NT.

I think we always need to be careful; and I'm mentioning this primarily because you said this was for your dissertation. But this really only confirms that the search as constructed returns certain hits in a particular database. Where the search query itself may have conceptual shortcomings, or where the database itself might have differences of syntactic approach or even error, there may false positives (static in your search results) or false negatives (missing a real occurrence).

This is one reason why we offer multiple syntactic databases, so that one can try to get a second opinion on a question such as this. It is probably well worth examining Dave Hooton's search query and the extra results he mentions from using Cascadia's annotation.

Rick Brannan (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/85596#Comment_85596

Hi David.

I would have liked to use a second unordered group for the relative pronoun and subject instead of using the OR operator, but for some reason the search failed (can we not put unordered groups inside unordered groups?).

Yes. Unordered groups are not supported within unordered groups. Under the hood, the query engine doesn't support unordered groups; we permute the possibilities specified by the unordered group and extend the query that is sent to the query engine. Allowing nested unordered groups gets rather nasty rather quickly.

davidphillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/86834#Comment_86834

Rick,

Thanks for the response. It's good to know!

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/86789#Comment_86789

C'mon Dave, don't bogart it...post a screen shot so we all can give it a shot.

Well, since you asked so nicely..... made in Cascadia

Run it with and without the bottom (No Subject) clause so you can appraise candidates wrt intervening Conjunctions. This subject has "matching skips levels".

Use maximum magnification to see the dotted lines for other "skips levels".

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