Re: OU DUNATAI hAMARTIAN in 1 John 3:9

From: Steve Long (
Date: Wed Oct 20 1999 - 15:25:41 EDT

> From what lexicon did you get that? Could you give another example where
>OU POIEI or OU DUNATAI refers to someone who does something, but not

The basic gloss for POIEW is to make, do, cause, effect, bring about,
accomplish, perform, provide, create (from my UBS dictionary at the back of
the 4th edition, the only one I have at work with me). Every use of POIEW
I've seen implies doing something on purpose. There isn't any other usage
of OU POIEI in the LXX or NT. OU DUNATAI is simply 'inablitiy', it says
nothing of whether it's deliberate or not. But since John uses parallelism
to explain an idea in different words, and I'm pretty sure this is a case
of parallelsim, the deliberateness of POIEI colors DUNATAI.

I think deliberateness is shown by using a verb + noun rather than just a
verb; 'to do sin' or 'to create a sinful act' rather than just 'to sin'. At
least that's the sense I get from it.


Steve Long
Allegro Digital Media, Inc.

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