The argument is over – and I’ve won. More details in points to follow.
Don’t believe me? Well let’s put it this way: I was never so angry at the opposing view that after boldly declaring I wasn’t going to pay to read a thesis, I…..paid to read a thesis. And folks, I would have sent it to him for FREE, but after he fabricated the actual history of the one time I DID send him something (back in 2010), I see no need to assist the unwilling.
After being wrong on the subject for years, Avery simply changed the subject.
For years, he has run from board to board asking for an example of a masculine participle followed by neuter nouns. The pretense, of course, is that none existed, but after reading my thesis EVEN AVERY HIMSELF admits the truth:
However, we can allow it as the one known early example of a "solecism anyway" argument.
Well, you thought there were none – because you can’t read the Greek text. Now that you’ve found one, of course, you’ll just change your argument to something else. Reality: NEUTER NOUNS CAN FOLLOW A MASCULINE PARTICIPLE – and even Steven Avery admits it in print.
Avery doesn’t seem to understand that there is more to the alleged grammatical arguments than just HIS claims about it.
We’re back to narcissism here. In his attacks upon me, Avery operates under a flawed assumption: that there is some sort of grammatical argument that Bulgaris first spelled out and that everybody somehow gets and states the same way. While for reasons of succinctness I had to limit the discussion, the reality is that
not even the KJVOs themselves are consistent in what they say about this subject – so you can hardly blame me for it.
I began work on the thesis in 2011, had to set it aside for eight months, and completed it in August 2013 after two revisions. This requires me to be up to date as much as possible, so consider this paragraph written by C.L. Pappas in 2011 that states “the grammatical argument”:
“In the Greek language, as in any foreign language, the articles, adjectives, participles, and nouns must be in agreement as they relate to each other in any particular sentence. They must not only agree in gender, but also agree in number as well. This is a fundamental grammatical rule. A student who has studied a foreign language is familiar with this grammatical principle. So then, if a noun is masculine in a sentence, then the articles, adjectives, and participles in relationship to that noun or nouns must also be masculine as well. The same is true if the nouns are either feminine or neuter.
There cannot be the mixture of the gender of the nouns, adjectives, and participles in any given sentence. To mix them would be a gross violation of basic grammatical rules of the language. Furthermore, to mix genders of nouns, participles, and adjectives would only produce confusion.” (C L Pappas, 2011:68-9, Google Books edition) .
These are the exact words of a published author on the subject. In reality, this happens quite often, but given I actually cited Pappas in the thesis, don’t try to pretend I wasn’t up to date with the scholarship. Pappas stated what most rank and file KJVOs who never studied Greek think the grammatical argument is.
But good ole Avery is telling all of us here that I’ve somehow messed up – because “but Bulgaris said.” The problem for Avery is simple:
just because Bulgaris began making the frivolous claim without merit in 1780 doesn’t necessitate me limiting either my argument OR my audience to the limitations that Eugenius Bulgaris imagined he saw on the biblical text. The reality, of course, is no limitations at all exist, and Bulgaris was simply out to school on this one. But assuming he’s right, we’ll get to the bigger question later on down the rebuttal. The FACT is this: in 2011, a KJVO pastor citing Gregory AND Nolan AND Dabney AND Hills (but conveniently omitting Bulgaris) made the claim that was tangential and part of what I addressed in the thesis.
Now as if this isn’t bad enough, guess who else fails to mention Bulgaris? Thomas Holland in 2000, who jumps from Gregory all the way over to Dabney (doesn’t even mention Nolan), and even Holland nowhere says this grammatical issue is limited by the parameters Spencer tells us it has to be (and as a reminder: every single person being discussed here has at least taken seminary level Greek EXCEPT for Spencer himself).
But it gets even worse – because while assisting another writer with the grammatical argument,
STEVEN AVERY HIMSELF mis-stated the grammatical argument.
Click the link and look at the cover page:
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/11724872/a-defense-of-the-johannine-comma-study-to-answernet
The page EXPLICITLY says Steven Avery assisted Timothy Dunkin with this project. Now I would normally consider it unfair to make this reference except for the fact Avery failed to inform Dunkin that he didn’t have a clue what the grammatical argument was. The table of contents says that the grammatical argument points begin on page 36.
Note Dunkin’s precise verbiage on page 36:
“The grammatical difficulty which is found in this passage if the Comma is deleted rests on a rule of Greek grammar (as well as in many other languages) which demands gender agreement among parts of a sentence.”
Notice what Dunkin DOES NOT do:
He does not cite Bulgaris (he mentions him on the next page, but he doesn’t discuss the alleged limitations of this argument), does not limit this “only” to neuters and masculines (as Avery, contradicting himself from his assistance with Dunkin, has been doing on this board since May as he attacks me), and then refers to Nolan’s grammatical argument as “similar”, indicating Dunkin’s view that Nolan’s position was a little different than Bulgaris’s.
IF THE KJVOS CANNOT EVEN AGREE UPON WHAT THE GRAMMATICAL ARGUMENT ACTUALLY IS, YOU CANNOT BLAME ME FOR NOT RESPONDING TO EACH PARTICULAR ASPECT OR CLAIM.