The use of the preposition kata in Romans 16:5

Mark Wilson emory2oo2 at hotmail.com
Tue Mar 6 10:25:27 EST 2001





>From: "Manfred Roth"

>I'd like to know why the phrase: "...kai thn kat oikon autwn ekklhsian" in
>Romans 16:5 is always translated as: "...the church that is in their
>house"
>As far as I know the preposition 'kata' doesn't mean 'in' but 'according
>to' or 'down from';
------

I think KATA is quite capable of a variety of nuances. KATA with Accusative 
often means REFERENCE.

With reference to those assembling at their house, greet them.

Could Distributive work here as well?

Wallace says of the Distributive: "indicating the division of a greater 
whole into individual parts."  This sounds like an option since in Rome 
there would have been believers meeting at many houses. For example, suppose 
believers met in a total of 40 to 50 houses, since you can only fit so many 
in one house. This house-church was simply one of the many.

As a side note, during the week believers met regularly in house-churches 

(as frequent as daily). On Sunday mornings, before the sun came up (so 
tradition says), many of those who met at various house-churches assembled 
together for a special Sunday service.  I think KATA may speak to this in 
some way. (The first century churches seem quite different to me than in our 
churches of the Western world.)

My thoughts,

Mark Wilson

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com




More information about the B-Greek mailing list