Definiteness of Anarthrous Nouns in Prepositional Phrases

Jay Adkins JAdkins264 at aol.com
Wed Jul 26 01:42:11 EDT 2000


Mike Sangrey wrote:
> Just a quick note of two cents worth:

>The definiteness (or not) of nouns is not just determined by coupling the
>presence of the article with the lexical definiteness of the noun. One 
must
>also determine whether the substantive is `focal' in the context.

I never intended to suggest that it did, thus my comment about taking the 
time to research the passages involved to determine which ones were 
definite and which ones weren't.  The search itself was presented as a 
response to Dale M. Wheeler's research and Paul Dixon's comments and 
question regarding the "data on some other prepositional constructs, like 
EIS, KATA, etc."

Wallace suggests (Beyond the Basics, page 245) "Though by definition an 
articular noun is definite, an anarthrous noun may also be definite under 
certain conditions.... there are at least ten constructions in which a noun 
may be definite though anarthrous."
1) Proper Names 
2) Object of a Preposition
3) With Ordinal Numbers
4) Predicate Nominative
5) Complement in Object-Complement Construction
6) Monadic Nouns
7) Abstract Nouns
8) A Genitive Construction (Apollonius' Corollary)
9) With a Pronominal Adjective
10) Generic Nouns

Of those mentioned #2 seems most appropriate to the use in Eph 5:18.  Also 
see Gordon Fee, God's Empowering Presence, (pages 21-24), where he 
discusses the usage of PNEUMA with the dative, quoting each passage in the 
Paul's corpus.  He states; "Thus, there are 37 occurrences where the Holy 
Spirit is either directly or indirectly in view: 32 are anarthrous and 5 
arthrous:" He summarizes; "with the formula PNEUMATI/ EN PNEUMATI there is 
a decided preference for what appears to be something of a conventional or 
stereotypical anarthrous usage.  The five instances with the article are 
easily explained:"

Sola Gratia,
		Jay Adkins
Always Under Grace!



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