[B-Greek] pronoun for Pneuma

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Jun 12 08:18:37 EDT 2006


On Jun 12, 2006, at 7:45 AM, Tunç SABUNCU wrote:

> Hi,
>
> From my readings, John refers to refers to “Spirit of Truth” by  
> using a pronoun without gender.
> That is not the case when he speaks about a preceding cite of  
> PARAKLHTOS.
>
> Do you agree with this?

This is really a simple matter of grammatical agreement with the  
gender of an antecedent noun; when that antecedent noun is the neuter  
noun PNEUMA, then the pronoun representing it is neuter singular to  
agree with it; when the antecedent is the masculine singular  
PARAKLHTOS, then the pronoun representing it is masculine singular in  
agreement with the noun. The pronouns don't tell us anything about  
the "biological" gender of what is being referred to by either noun  
(PNEUMA or PARAKLHTOS).

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





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