[B-Greek] Article Confusion
Carlton Winbery
winberycl at earthlink.net
Tue Aug 23 18:09:41 EDT 2005
>Could someone please explain to me the purpose of the definite
>article (nominative masculine singular) in Matthew 6:9? Pater hmwn
>ho en tois ouranois
>
>Pater is a vocative masculine singular noun so I did a search in the
>New Testament (I didnt check the LXX) and could not find another
>example of the article being used in this way with Pater. In Luke
>11:2 there is no article either; Pater is simply followed by a comma.
>
>In a related question, what is signaling other parts of speech
>(verbs, pronouns, etc.) to translators? KJV: Our Father which art
>in heaven; NAS and ASV: Our Father who art in heaven. The ESV and
>NIV translate it as Our Father in heaven which makes the most
>sense to my very, very basic understanding of what the Greek words
>mean.
>
>Thank you,
>
>Fitzwilliam Darcy
>
Actually the article is used with EN TOIS OURANOIS and transforms the
prepositional phrase into a modifier of PATHR, "the in Heaven one."
Some choose to understand a participle with this construction. hO WN
EN TOIS OURANOIS. This is a quite common use of the article to show
grammatical relationships of other elements in the sentence.
--
Carlton L. Winbery
Retired Professor of Religion
Louisiana College
318-448-6103
winberycl at earthlink.net
winbery at lacollege.edu
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