[B-Greek] gender of pronouns

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Apr 12 05:48:46 EDT 2004


At 5:05 PM +1000 4/12/04, Lew Osborne wrote:
>Hi,
>
>In John 1:3 the pronoun 'him' was translated as 'it' until about 1568.
>Taking all doctrinal thinking out of the equation and understanding that the
>word 'logos' is the 'essential thought' ; 'the concept of an idea' should
>the word 'autos' be translated 'it'; 'he'; 'she' or whatever in this
>context. What governs this?

Quite simply put, the antecedent of AUTOU and AUTON in John 1:3 is hO
LOGOS; the antecedent noun is masculine singular and therefore the gender
of AUTOU and AUTON is masculine singular. The gender of LOGOS is masculine
but that fact doesn't imply anything about biological gender.
-- 

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/



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