[B-Greek] Ephesians 2:8
George F Somsel
gfsomsel at juno.com
Fri Jun 17 19:22:30 EDT 2005
On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 15:30:31 -0700 (PDT) Gregory Carpenter
<grcjman2004 at yahoo.com> writes:
> I have recently begun studying Koine Greek. I am
> studying from William Mounce's book, "Basics of
> Biblical Greek". In the beginning of Chapter 2 he
> states that "it" refers to the entire process of
> salvation, including our faith. How do you
> grammatically explain from this text that "it"
> includes our "faith"? Thanks.
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Greetings, Gregory, and welcome to the wonderfully whacky world of Greek.
Since you are new, you probably are not aware that it is good to include
a transliteration of the text under consideration (many of the "old
timers" (Ahem !! Take note ! ) fail to do so). I would encourage you to
learn good habits early.
TEXT
THi GAR XARITI ESTE SESWiSMENOI DIA PISTEWS KAI TOUTO OUK EC hUMWN, QEOY
TO DWRON.
Note the word TOUTO. It is from hOUTOS, hAUTH, TOUTO. A check in BDAG
(Baur, Danker, Arndt & Gingrich _A Greek-English Lexicon of the New
Testament and Other Early Christian Literature_ (3rd edition), which is
THE lexicon to have for NT studies (Accept no substitutes. Go, sell your
first-born child and buy one.), reveals that it signifies first of all
"the person or thing comparatively near at hand in the discourse
material." In this case that would be PISTIS. It is thus a matter of
the nearest referent.
george
gfsomsel
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