Surprising classifications in Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament

Harry Hahne

I was doing a simple search for substantival participles in the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament (SGNT). I was surprised to see how many instances of substantival participles are classified as something else.

For example, in 1 John, it only classifies 3 instances of participles as substantival:

• 1 John 2:17 (ὁ ... ποιῶν)
• 1 John 5:1 (τὸν γεννήσαντα)
• 1 John 5:1 (τὸν εγεννημένον)

All of these are valid instances of substantival participles. But any basic Greek grammar will show that there are numerous other substantival participles in 1 John. Many of these are classified by SGNT as attributive. For example, in 1 John 2:4, SGNT classifies ὁ λέγων as an attributive participle. The Lexham SGNT Glossary defines an attributive participle "attribute(s) a characteristic or an action to another sentential element, usually a noun". There is no noun in this sentence that this participle modifies. The participle is a substantival participle functioning as the subject of the verb ἐστὶν. The syntax graph does not show this participle as modifying any noun and it is certainly not a predicate adjective. Why is this classified as attributive rather than substantival?

There are numerous other examples of substantival participles classified as attributive (e.g. 1 John 4:6, 9, 10, 11; etc.). Even in 1 John 5:1  ὁ πιστεύων is classified as attributive, but τὸν γεννήσαντα and τὸν εγεννημένον are classified as attributive.

I know that functional classifications can be subjective and debatable. But I don't see why these could be classified as attributive. Perhaps I don't understand the tagging philosophy in this resource and I would be glad if someone could explain why these are classified this way.

Harry Hahne

Here are a few other syntactical tags that don't make sense to me:

• Participles that are tagged as a "finite verb" (e.g. 1 John 5:10). Wallace defines a finite verb as "any verb which when parsed includes person. Thus indicative, subjunctive, optative, and imperative verbs will take a nom. subject, while infinitives and participles technically take no subject.” (Wallace, GGBB, 38 n 6) So by definition a participle is not a finite verb.
• Article plus substantival participle classified as a relative clause. This makes sense in English translation, but not in Greek grammar, since there is no relative pronoun in these constructions. For example, in ὁ λέγων could be translated "he who believes", but syntactically in Greek, λέγων is a substantival participle and ὁ is an article, not a relative pronoun.

I am just trying to understand the SGNT tagging system, so I can trust the searches that I do with it. I like it initially because the classifications are like widely used New Testament Greek grammars (BDF, Turner, Wallace), but the actual tags in many instances are not conventional or at least debatable.

If this is not the best forum for this type of discussion, please tell me where I should take it. I know there are a lot of Greek scholars that check this forum.