[B-Greek] understanding the genitive
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at ioa.com
Thu Dec 15 21:57:06 EST 2005
On Dec 15, 2005, at 8:01 PM, clare arnold wrote:
> Can you help me understand some of the functions, from a grammatical
> standpoint, of the genitive in THN AGAPHN TOU QEOU? My grammar
> text is not
> very helpful.
>
> Can "the love of Christ" be understood to mean each of the
> following senses
> depending on context?:
>
> 1. love is an attribute that Christ possesses
>
> 2. love is an action Christ performs
>
> 3. love is an action performed by someone else toward Christ
>
> 4. love is received "from" Christ. (Is the genitive "of" ever
> synonymous
> with "from" in Greek?)
Any of the four alternatives you've stated could be an intended sense
of the phrase hH TOU IHSOU CRISTOU AGAPH; the Greek genitive phrase
has as its nearest English equivalent "Christ-love" -- but obviously
that won't do as a translation and so we endeavor to put it into a
more idiomatic English phrase: the love we have for Christ, the love
Christ has/shows for us. Traditionally we term those subjective
genitive and objective genitive, but that distinction has more to do
with how we translate it than with how the Greek itself functions.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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