Stephen Hughes wrote:jdhadwin wrote:My point did not hinge on whether ὁ νοῦς μου can be used as I implied it was being used in Philippians. My theory hinges on whether μου is requred to be a possessive pronoun or whether it can be a normal personal pronoun. Everything hinges on that.
In Modern Greek the genitive is (generally) restricted to the use as possessive. In the Koine period the genitive (μου is a genitive) is not restricted to possessive. It has other meanings that your grammar you are working from will spell out in "uses of the genitive" or the like.
Even if the genitive could be something other than a possessive, that doesn't show you what it is in this case.
Here's what I was drawing from on the genitive not necessarily being possessive (from New Testament Greek dot org's description of the genitive case
My own thoughts:Genitive Case
For the most part, the genitive is often viewed as the case of possession. In more technical terms one noun in the genitive case helps to qualify another noun by showing its "class" or "kind". The genitive case has more uses than most other cases, but in general a noun in the genitive case helps to limit the scope of another noun by indicating its "kind" or "class". It is generally translated into English with a prepositional phrase starting with the word "of". The most common use of the genitive is to show possession (although it does not necessarily indicate actual, literal ownership).
The word genitive is better than "possessive" and the name of the case itself really is the perfect description of what μου does to ὁ νοῦς While this is thought of as being possessive in the English mind, it is truly superior to call it genitive, being more a matter of heredity than of possession. At least that's what I get out of the word "genitive". The nominative word is like a descendant of the genitive word; the genitive word is like a parent of the nominative word. Of course I do not mean that they are etymologically ancestors and descendants, but I speak of "parenting one word to another word".
To illustrate the metaphor, wherever the genitive parent-word goes, the nominative child-word is bound to go with it. However, wherever the nominative child-word goes, the genitive parent-word is not bound to go. Of course I do not mean that these words are literally going anywhere, but it is just a figure of speech. Whatever the parent does, the child follows, but whatever the child does, its genitive parent does not necessarily follow. I think that this generational parallel is perfectly wrapped up into the the word "genitive", to aide us in understanding its genitive function and effect on the nominative word it parents.
Would you say this is true of the genitive case?
~John