AKOH PISTEWS

Ben Crick ben.crick at argonet.co.uk
Sun Jul 25 11:05:36 EDT 1999


On Sat 24 Jul 99 (15:44:43), dpreznik at usa.net wrote:
> What can AKOH PISTEWS mean: hearing with faith, or preaching about
> faith, or anything else?

 Dear Dmitriy

 It is often helpful when considering what appears to be a simple
 genitive construction, to see if it is a Hebraism: a Greek version
 of the Hebrew Construct Relationship.

 Hebrew is short of adjectives; so characteristically to say a phrase like
 "a faithful hearing", one would put "a hearing-of faith": where "hearing-of"
 is a noun in the Construct State. This comes into Greek as EX AKOHS PISTEWS,
 where the "of" gets taken from the end of "hearing-of" and included in
 the Genitive Case ending, "of faith".

 So when I see a Genitive pair like this, I don't ask myself "Is this
 a subjective or an objective Genitive?"; I try treating the word in
 the Genitive as an Adjective qualifying the other word in the pair.

 So Paul's rhetorical question is "Received ye the Spirit by the works of
 the Law, or as a result of faithfully listening [to the Word]?" (paying
 faithful attention to the Word; accepting the Word by faith).

 Xorosho?

 Ben
-- 
 Revd Ben Crick, BA CF
 <ben.crick at argonet.co.uk>
 232 Canterbury Road, Birchington, Kent, CT7 9TD (UK)
 http://www.cnetwork.co.uk/crick.htm






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