John 17:24–25 Vocative πάτερ, Vocative ὁ πατήρ and Greek Grammar and Language Patterns as Text Selection Criteria

Both verses start with the vocative “Father,” but both have Alexandrian nominative forms πατήρ. Wescott/Hort (1881) and Nestle (1904) retained the odd form πατήρ in both verses. The form πατήρ δίκαιε mixes cases and does not look like good Greek to most people. There are 69 pairs of adjacent words with these inflections (both nominative and vocative forms occur) in the Greek New Testament (GNT) like δοῦλε πονηρέ or πιστὸς δοῦλος or Ἰησοῦ Υἱὲ τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ Ὑψίστου. They all have concordant vocative or nominative forms except Matthew 15:22, which has Κύριε υἱὸς Δαυείδ. However the majority of manuscripts have υἱέ, and the selection by (Nestle-Aland) NA is dubious and not normal Greek and should be corrected.

The reason that Wescott/Hort and Nestle retained the odd form πατήρ δίκαιε is that this form occurs in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus and there are no papyri. As a general rule, when this happens, the NA follows the Alexandrian manuscripts, even if they look odd, because they put more faith in the Alexandrian manuscripts than in ideas of Greek grammar, although they override the witnesses to produce normal spelling because manuscript spelling errors are so obvious and frequent.

However, in NA27 they gave in to the principle that there are some grammar mistakes like case agreement here that the original Greek speakers would not have made, and they assumed that the Alexandrian manuscripts were just scribal mistakes, so that grammar rules could help decide text selection. To be consistent, they probably should have done this in Matthew 15:22 also.

NA also used a grammar rule to override their normal text selection criteria in John 17:24. The old Nestle criterion was to go with the majority of Alexandrian witnesses and the lexio difficilior. The general Greek rule that caused them to override the old selection rule for anarthrous πατήρ is that if a nominative masculine singular that has a vocative form is used as vocative, it must be articular. Since πατήρ in the Alexandrian texts is anarthrous and nominative and has a vocative meaning, they decided to use language patterns as a factor in selecting πάτερ over πατήρ.

There are 59 vocative words whose form differs from the nominative in the GNT in 320 occurrences; 17 of the 59 are adjectives, 41 are nouns and 1 is a participle; 17 of the nouns are proper names. All 59 vocative inflections are singular and anarthrous; they have 11 different declensions; they are all masculine except feminine γυνή and θύγατερ.

The majority of vocative functions in the GNT use the nominative form. There are probably nearly a thousand vocative functions in the GNT. The majority of functional vocatives are plural. All plural vocatives use the nominative form.

Seventeen times, the vocative function of either case is preceded by Ὦ as in Ὦ ἄνθρωπε O man. Singular masculine nominative words with a vocative form may be used as vocatives if they are articular: ὁ θεός, ὁ πατήρ, ὁ βασιλεύς, ὁ κύριος, ὁ δεσποτής. There are 21 of these occurrences in the 30% of the GNT that is coded. We see vocative ὁ πατήρ in Matthew 11:26, Mark 14:36, Luke 10:21, Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6. These articular nominative forms are the substitute for Ὦ θεέ, Ὦ πάτερ, Ὦ βασιλεύ, Ὦ κύριε, Ὦ δέσποτα, which never occur. As a confirmation of this equivalence, no anarthrous nominative form of these nouns occurs as a vocative. That is why NA27 selected πάτερ instead of πατήρ in verse 24.

Vocative Rule A: an anarthrous nominative masculine inflection is not vocative if it has a vocative form (it must be articular).

Vocative Rule B: If two vocative singular masculine words are adjacent, and they both have vocative forms, then they must both be vocative or both masculine, not mixed. (They may be mixed if one of them lacks the vocative form.)