In John 2. 4 there is a peculiar Greek idiom which has not only given almost every translator difficulty, but which is, in the opinion of the writer, both a key to the way in which the author of the Fourth Gospel used his sources, and to his interpretation of Jesus. The verse reads ‘And Jesus said to her: τί έμοί καί σοί; woman, my hour has not yet come.’
[1] This manuscript was complete before I became aware of DrBuck's, Harry M. excellent study of this idiom in ‘Redactions of the Fourth Gospel and the Mother of Jesus’ which appeared in Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature, published in honour of Professor Wikgren (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1974) 170–80Google Scholar. Prof. Buck and I reach the same conclusion regarding the meaning of this idiom. He does not, as I do in this article, suggest that Johannine usage has its origins in Mark, nor does he relate it to Johannine Christology. I also have a different understanding of the significance of ‘the mother of Jesus’ in John 19. 25 ff., but that would be the subject of another paper.
[2] Ernest Cadman Cowell has an interesting explanation for this in his John Defends the Gospel.