[B-Greek] Re: Masculine expressions for generic reference (trying again)
George F Somsel
gfsomsel at juno.com
Fri Dec 17 03:05:43 EST 2004
On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:46:43 +0900 (KST) <moon at sogang.ac.kr> writes:
> I am sorry. What I typed did not look OK. Some encoding problem!
> Let me try again.
>
> 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 says that the
masculine and feminine forms of TIS are the same. It means that TIS is
ambiguous. But doesn't it mean that TIS is a generic pronoun for
both men and women?
>
> Moon Jung
> Sogang Univ, Seoul, Korea
>
____________
Moon,
I'm surprised that Ann Nyland hasn't responded to you as yet since this
is a subject very near and dear to her heart. It is correct that the use
of a masculine form does not exclude women. To bring up an old chestnut
I refer you to Rom 16, but I'm not going to reference the question of
IOUNIA (or IOULIA) / IOUNIAS. In 16.3, 4 we read
3 ASPASASQE PRISKAN KAI AKULAN TOIS SUNERGOUS MOU EN XRISTOU IHSOU
4 hOITINES, hUPER THS YUXHS MOU hUPEUHKAN . . .
While TIS, TI has a common M/F form, OSTIS does not. [See: Jdg 21.14; Mt
25.1, 27.55; Lk 8.3, 23.55; Philip 4.3; 1 Tm 1.4, 6.9; Heb 10.8, 11; 1 Pt
2.11] Note that the masculine is used here for this husband & wife team.
Also, it is not the case that a masc form is used when men might be
included and a fem only when referring to females. The distinction is
between grammatical gender and physical gender. We frequently reference
in terms of physical gender, but this was not necessarily the case in
Greek (though I seem to recall some cases of KATA SUNESIN). In Greek the
grammatical gender was significant. An extremely interesting case which
involves more than simply the grammatical gender of a word but even the
perceived nature of the word itself is surprising. At the moment I don't
have the time to pursue the reference -- it is in one of the plays
[Euripides?] where he has the goddess Athena refer to herself as a
"gardner" which is literally "a man [ANHR] of plants." Some have
contended that ANQRWPOS and, most especially, ANHR in the NT can only
refer to males, but this seems highly dubious.
george
gfsomsel
___________
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