[B-Greek] "the heart" in John 16:6

James Ernest jdemail at charter.net
Wed May 11 11:48:25 EDT 2005


This is a question of English usage, so maybe the curtain will fall soon on
this thread. Before that happens I'll offer my humble opinions: (1) English
idiom is different from Greek, French, or German, so usage in those
languages, while interesting, is not determinative. (2) In English, you can
find varied usage; I think the norm is: use plural for concrete nouns, where
the thought is more likely to concern individual, hence countable,
referents; singular for abstract, at least when where the referent is less
likely to be thought of as individual. Thus, a physician speaking to a group
of alcholics might say:

   Your drinking has damaged your livers (not liver).
   Your drinking has impaired your judgment (not judgments).

The problem with "heart" used metaphorically is that it seems to fall
somewhere between; in such cases English usage seems to have migrated away
from singular to plural over time. With regard to KARDIA in John, note that
RSV (or was it already ASV? it's repeated by NRSV) changed the KJV's
singular to plural in 14:1, 14:27, 16:6, 16:22--but (inconsistently) not in
12:40. Might be interesting to check REB and other versions.

--------------------------------
James D. Ernest, Ph.D., Editor
Baker Academic
jernest at BakerAcademic.com
http://www.BakerAcademic.com
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