[B-Greek] Romans 16:1 DIAKONON Fem or Neut?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Nov 13 19:32:52 EST 2003
At 5:32 PM -0600 11/13/03, Pastor Thomas C. Black wrote:
>Nearly every source I have says that DIAKONON in Romans 16:1 is a
>feminine noun, save one: MacArthur's Romans commentary (page 361)
>declares that, "The Greek word [DIAKONON] here is neuter".
>It looks neuter so why is it consistently referred to as feminine?
>If it's feminine why does John MacArthur say otherwise?
I can't speak for MacArthur's rationale, but in fact this is a
"common-gender" noun of the second declension that can be used with either
the masculine or feminine article and noun. Certainly there's no way it can
be neuter here, although I imagine it could be theoretically used
adjectivally with a neuter noun like PAIDION. It should be understood as
feminine in Rom 16:1. The -OS noun ending was not distinctively masculine,
and in fact there are many feminine nouns in -OS and there are also quite a
few adjectives that have nominative singular in -OS in both masculine and
feminine genders.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list