Rom.8:16,26

Wayne Leman wayne_leman at sil.org
Sat Jun 8 13:28:36 EDT 2002


> Dear Friends,
>
>   I was curious as to why Rom 8:26, ALLA AUTO TO PNEUMA,(also Rom.8:16) is
usually translated "the Spirit himself",as most translations have it, and
not "the Spirit itself" as the KJV renders it. It is clear that PNEUMA is a
neuter noun and the third person pronoun AUTO also accompanies it. Why do
most translations render it "the Spirit himself" instead of "the Spirit
itself"? I understand that gender in Greek is strictly grammatical.Many
thanks.

Hello Tony,

It is true that Greek gender is grammatical. Much of the time, but not all
of the time, Greek grammatical gender aligns with biological gender. When
translating from Greek to any other language, if the translation is going to
be accurate for that translation language, one must use the gender resources
of that language to get the correct *translation* (not *grammatical*)
equivalent, so that the denotational (referential) meaning of the entity
referred to by the Greek gender is accurately communicated to the
translation language. Sometimes, deciding on a translation equivalent
becomes a theological issue, as it is here, with translation of TO PNEUMA to
English. Some exegetes consider the "Spirit" an inanimate entity; others
consider it an animate entity. The first group would consider English "it"
to be the proper translation equivalent for the denotational meaning of TO
PNEUMA. The second group would consider "he" to be the proper translation
equivalent.

Does this help?

Wayne
-----
Wayne Leman
Bible Translation discussion list:
http://biblepacesetter.org/bibletranslation/index.html

>
>                                    Tony Costa
>                                  University of Toronto





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