[B-Greek] John 1:1

William Zeitler william at faithfulbible.com
Tue Dec 28 17:38:39 EST 2004


(Dare I post?)

Greek is hardly alone in having grammatical gender for nouns. The romance
languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan), German, many many
have gender. Sometimes it's downright counterintuitive: in German 'das
Madchen' (young girl) is neuter. Many such 'counterintuitive' examples could
be cited.

Ferinstance, in Koine, PERIKEFALAIA (helmet) is feminine.

The 'natural gender' system of English -- in which only nouns referring to
males and females have gender and inanimate objects are neuter -- is
apparently unusual in the world's language systems. Even English (Old
English) had grammatical  gender up to about the 11th or 12th centuries.

Regarding Greek gender: According to Aristotle, Protagoras first created the
terms 'masculine', 'feminine' and 'neuter' for noun declensions in the 5th
century BCE. Protagoras himself wanted to change the gender of words he felt
had the wrong 'gender'. The labels have persisted.

A nice article on this topic can be found at:
http://assets.cambridge.org/052182/0073/sample/0521820073ws.pdf

Peace,

william zeitler


-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Doug Hoxworth
Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 2:06 PM
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] John 1:1


>><John>
>>Is there any significance, then, for hO LOGOS in
John 1:1 being a masculine noun?





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