[B-Greek] Question?

Barry Hofstetter nebarry at earthlink.net
Sun Feb 16 22:41:03 EST 2003


----- Original Message -----
From: <KEVINQ969 at aol.com>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 6:22 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] Question?


> Hello, My name is Kevin, I'm a first year Greek student and I had a question
> posed to me by another student. I think I know the answer but I'm not quite
> sure.  John 3:16 reads; "God so loved the world that he gave His only
> begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him...   The question is in regard
> to the second part of this verse.  " whosoever believes in Him" is He (John),
> referring to God or Jesus? I noticed that in the Greek text that "AUTON," the
> personal pronoun is in the accusative case and so is "UION" (SON), does this
> link them together or was John referring to believing in "God"?

In general, Kevin, one tends to go with the closest possible word that is
grammatically possible to be the antecedent, in this case, hUION, unless there
is overwhelmingly contrary contextual evidence, which one does not find here.

N.E. Barry Hofstetter
Professor of Theological and Biblical Studies
    The Center for Urban Theological Studies, Philadelphia, PA
http://home.earthlink.net/~nebarry



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