[B-Greek] gender of pronouns

Joseph Weaks j.weaks at tcu.edu
Mon Apr 12 11:25:31 EDT 2004


On Apr 12, 2004, at 4:48 AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> 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.

And, quite simply, the translation of the pronoun as "him" is a 
theological assertion (presumably that the logos is the pre-existent 
male Christ), not a grammatical one. That doesn't make it wrong, but it 
does make it a quite interpretive feature.

Cheers,
Joe




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