Revelation 1:10
Danny Andre' Dixon
bereandad at yahoo.com
Wed Jun 5 14:43:29 EDT 2002
Ed:
What we have here is a dative expression beginning
with the Greek dative of time preposition "en" in the
phrase "Een tee Kyriakee heemera." The word "Lord" is
in the attributive position and makes it basically an
adjective describing the "day." "Lord's day" works,
but at its heart we have something more in the idea of
a day with special respect to the Lord--a "Lord-type
day" (Pardon that Dixonism, you more mature scholars!)
And it is on (Gk: "en" dative of time) this day that
John found himself in (This time "en" is probably
dative of location with John "in the sphere of the
Spirit" on the "day pertaining to the Lord").
In my judgment, the passage isn't so much speaking of
the day as belonging to the Lord, which would be
easier represented in the genitive case. But it is
descriptive (as the genitive could also indicate),
which is best described, when using the dative, as a
dative of respect, namely "day pertaining to the
Lord," or to use Wm. G. MacDonald's term, "dative of
reference," which "indicates the personified idea to
which the transitive verb [here egenomeen, aor. midd.
indic. 1 sg. "I was"] refers" (GREEK ENCHRIDION,
[Hendrickson Pubs., 1979], p. 86).
I suppose one could, depending on his millenial stripe
say that because the Apocalypse is John's vision of
the eshatological "day of the Lord" (namely of final
end times judgment, or some such thought. Cf. 2 Peter
3:10, where "day of the Lord" is in the genetive:
heemera Kuriou), but not everything in the letter
would most naturally read that way. As your question
suggests, a priori presuppositions can affect how one
translates this and many other phrases in passages.
Respectfully,
Danny Andre' Dixon
Ft. Worth, TX
--- Ed Garcia <Ed.Garcia at FHLBTopeka.com> wrote:
> Revelation 1:10 uses the expression "the Lord's
> day". Can the Greek here be
> translated as "the day of the Lord"? Why or why not?
> Or, what makes for the
> best translation? Sorry for not including the
> transliterated Greek
> characters but I never seem to get them quite right.
> Thank you.
>
>
> Ed Garcia
> Kansas
=====
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