Plenary Genitive

Jason Lee jllee at mailcity.com
Mon May 24 04:36:30 EDT 1999


Really.

I suspect this is one of the wonders of the Indo-European (IE) language 
family. From Sanskrit to English, the so-called genitive case, in due 
course, has picked up so many nuances in relational abstractions. At the 
Koine Greek era, already various 'functionalities' had collapsed into the 
same genitive construct; the same is true with English. Some IE languages 
show this kind of ‘structural assimilation' more than others (e.g. Latin 
retains the ablative forms, even if they often look like datives, whereas 
Greek in the same era does not). Nonetheless, it is somewhat interesting to 
see such a highly inflected language as Greek would absorb multiple 
functions in singular forms, particularly the genitive, although language 
morphology tends to simplify through time. Indeed, the resolution of 
ambiguities resides primarily in the context, whether immediate or remote. 
Often the big picture will arbitrate (e.g. I John 2:15 AGAPH TOU QEOU is 
ambiguous in the immediate context as to whether it is the love from the 
Father - subjective genitive - or the love for the Father - objective 
genitive, but perhaps it is not so ambiguous to those who are acquainted 
with the biblical gospel message as a whole). Herein requires not only the 
knowledge of a grammarian, but much more the expertise of an exegete, which 
no doubt came from learning of the letters and of the Spirit.



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