John 10:33 — Nominative vs. Accusative Nuance (θεος / θεον)

Question

John 10:33 in the Greek reads (NA28):

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ἀπεκρίθησαν αὐτῷ οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι· περὶ καλοῦ ἔργου οὐ λιθάζομέν σε ἀλλὰ περὶ βλασφημίας, καὶ ὅτι σὺ ἄνθρωπος ὢν ποιεῖς σεαυτὸν θεόν.

There is nothing special or difficult about the Greek here. A literal rendering is:

The Jews answered him: We are not stoning you for a good work, but for blasphemy; because you, being a man,¹ make yourself God.

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[This is a purely linguistic question: it has nothing to do with theology whatsoever.]

As I understand the use of the accusative here, it would seem the Jews are accusing Jesus (no pun intended) of identifying Himself as 'God [Himself]' (θεον) as opposed to 'a god,' (θεος);² that is, 'as to his nature, θεος.'³

A simpler way of putting it would be that the syntax of σὺ ἄνθρωπος ὢν ποιεῖς σεαυτὸν θεόν should mean the Jews are saying 'You are claiming to be God [Himself] whereas you are a man [as to your nature],' and not 'You are claiming to be [as to your nature a] god, whereas you are a man [as to your nature].'

Or simpler: they are not saying 'you imply your nature is god, but you are only human,' but rather 'you imply your are God [Himself], who are a [mere] man!'

Question

How grammatically accurate is the above assessment?

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^Footnotes

^{1 Or 'who are a man' or '—a man—'}

^{2 Obviously not in a polytheistic sense, but insofar as God is 'θεος' in the essential sense, qualitatively speaking.}

^{3 Cf. Jn 1:1c}

Answer 1

As I understand the use of the accusative here, it would seem the Jews are accusing Jesus...of identifying Himself as 'God [Himself]' (θεον) as opposed to 'a god,' (θεος); that is, 'as to his nature, θεος.'

Whether they were claiming he was θεός in nature or θεός in person (i.e., God the Father), the verb ποιέω as used in either context would have required the lemma θεός to be declined in the accusative case (i.e., θεόν).

Wilke (translated by Thayer) on the verb ποιέω:¹

ποιεῖν τινα [“to make something”] with an accusative of the predicate,

γ. to (make, i. e.) declare one anything: John 5:18; John 8:53; John 10:33; John 19:7, 12; 1 John 1:10; 1 John 5:10; τί with an accusative of the predicate Matthew 12:33 (on which see Meyer).

(As an aside, they were accusing him of being θεός in nature. Jesus said that his father was God, and a father and his begotten son share the same nature.)

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Footnotes

¹ p. 525, ποιέω

References

Wilke, Christian Gottlob. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Being Grimm Wilke’s Clavis Novi Testamenti. Trans. Thayer, Joseph Henry.Ed. Grimm, Carl Ludwig Wilibald. Rev. ed. New York: American Book, 1889.

Answer 2

I do not believe this is an accurate assessment. If I understand the proposition correctly, OP is suggesting that the accusative case of θεόν indicates identity with a definite individual rather than a "merely" qualitative assertion. The syntactical role of θεόν here is that of a complement in object-complement construction. In New Testament Greek, the complement in such a construction tends to be qualitative or indefinite rather than definite, particularly when the complement follows the object. In Dan Wallace's Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament, he states:

On a continuum from definite to qualitative to indefinite, the object will normally fall in the definite range, while the complement will tend toward the qualitative-indefinite range.

Wallace goes on to point out that in Acts 28:6, Paul is reckoned by the locals to be "a god" using the same construction.¹

ἔλεγον αὐτὸν εἶναι θεόν.

For a much more detailed discussion of the semantics of the object-complement, and for specific mention of this verse, see Wallace's paper The Semantics and Exegetical Significance of the Object-Complement Construction in the New Testament.² The word θεόν in John 10:33 is said to be:

apparently qualitative, stressing the nature or essence of Jesus.

<sub>Notes
1. I do not mean to suggest that "a god" would be more appropriate in John 10:33. Given John's theology, he very likely intended this as God, but it is a claim of quality rather than identity. The fact that this same construction leans toward the indefinite in certain contexts underscores this fact.</sub>

_{2. I have not interacted with the hypothetical nominative that the OP poses, since it is not in the text and I honestly don't see how this would be grammatically viable. However, if the intention is that of a predicate nominative in relationship with the subject "σὺ", it is worth noting that Wallace's thesis in this paper is that the object-complement is "semantically equivalent to the subject-predicate nominative construction".}

_{References
Daniel B. Wallace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), p. 185}

_{Daniel B. Wallace, Grace Theological Journal 6.1 (1985), p. 108.}

Answer 3

The juxtaposition of "being [a] man" lends itself to "make yourself [a] god", no? In fact, the following verses seem to demand the idea that he is claiming to be "a god" (though he actually claims to be the son of [the] God):

Joh 10:34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? Joh 10:35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Joh 10:36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?