[B-Greek] Hebrews 1:2

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Jul 11 17:34:59 EDT 2004


At 4:10 PM -0400 7/11/04, Jesus Arocho wrote:
>Second question:
>
>Why is "EN UIW" translated as "His Son" although UIW is in the dative case?

You appear to be asking questions based upon a translation, perhaps an
interlinear text, rather than upon a Greek text which you have parsed and
understood the construction of directly. The phrase EN hUIWi is a
preposition used with an instrumental dative--that means that EN must bear
the sense "by means of" or "through the instrumentality of." hUIWi is
indeed dative but as I've noted above, it's not a dative of indirect object
and it's not a locative dative; in an English translation the FUNCTION of
the case and preposition are normally conveyed by a preposition or a
prepositional phrase such as "by means of" or "through the instrumentality
of"; hUIWi apart from its case working with EN bears the sense "a son";
that is to say, "His" is not explicitly indicated in the Greek at all;
translators supply it because it seems appropriate--but you'll probably
find that some translations do have it simply as "by means of a son." So
for instance NET conveys verse 2 thus: " ... in these last days he has
spoken to us in a son ..." I'd prefer "by means of a son" myself, but
perhaps most readers might find "in a son" meaningful enough here.
-- 

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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