[B-Greek] Masculine expressions for generic reference
moon at sogang.ac.kr
moon at sogang.ac.kr
Sun Dec 12 21:17:56 EST 2004
I recently read some articles on 1 Cor 14:26- 40. Those articles claim that
the masculine expressions in v. 26 - 33, e.g.
(1)
hEKASTOS, hEIS, hEAUTWi, PROFHTAI,
ALLWi,
DIERMHNEUTHS
indicate that this passage talks about only men.
(2) hUMAS MONOUS in 14:36 also indicate that the referent of this
expression is men only, because MONOUS is masculine.
I searched for the bgreek archive to see if there is some discussions
about it. I found one. There Carlton Winbery said the following:
It seems very difficult for English students (especially American) to get
a
feel for the Greek use of gender. If any pronoun, adjective,
participle, etc.
might include a man, they used the masculine. The
masculine gender by itself
in such words does not rule out women
unless the context makes it clear that
only men were referred to. I
see nothing in the context of this passage that
rules out women,
certainly not vss. 34-35. So, the feminine form of such
words
generally ruled out men but the masculine does not rule out women.
---------------
Now, what Carlton says is new to me. I always assumed that even when
they are meant to be generic, masculine expressions (for persons)
primarily refer to men, which then represent the whole group.
But what Carlton says seems to be more than that;
If any pronoun, adjective, participle, etc.
might include a man, they
used the masculine.
It means that masculine expressions are for mixed groups.
Are there any evidences for it?
-----------------------------------------
(3) In relation to it, a grammar book I have has the following chart for
TIS:
M
F
N
N
TIS
TIS
TI
G
TINOS
TINOS TINOS
D
TINI
TINI
TINI
A
TINA
TINA TI
-----------------------------------------
The question is: (1) the masculine and feminine forms of TIS happen to
be the same? Or (2) TIS is a generic pronoun for both men and
women?
Moon Jung
Sogang Univ, Seoul, Korea
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